Stephan
Phillips
Phillip's
goal as an artist is to make paintings that inspire
devotion and self transformation. He composes images
of figures and landscapes utilizing narratives chosen
from Christian traditions. He finds in Christianity
a wealth of material with which he is intimately and
lovingly familiar, having been raised as a Catholic.
However, his work is inspired by all the great prophets
of God. Phillip's is trained formally in eastern philosophy
and meditation and graduated with a BFA from Cornish
College of the Arts in Seattle, WA.
Phillip's works without the use of models or photographs
because the source of his vision is an inward contemplation
of reality, not an outward observation of physical
phenomena. His work reexamines the implications and
expressive potential of these narratives. Phillip's
brings them a mystical definition of self and religion.
Phillip's has developed a style that is based on the
conflation of spatial and planar vocabularies. He
finds the simultaneity of abstract and realistic elements
allows him to respond to the complex dualities that
animate his being and characterize his experiences
of self. It satisfies him artistic need to make intuitive
formal searching visually accountable to a viewer
by incorporating something as a indirect as a shape.
He united these two diverging techniques by rendering
modeled forms on flat ground.
Phillip's uses a composition free from the tyranny
of a linear perspective to express an order more appropriate
to a mystical conception of the universe. While retaining
the thread of the narrative, he can create an image
of nonlinear passages that encourages an exegetic
reading. A cloud for example, can be in a direct and
intimate relationship with a person, the distance
between them being both far and nonexistent.
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