 | Englishman Frederick Phillips is rapidly emerging as the master imagist of his generation. His work increasingly attracts collectors wherever it is shown. As a painter, Phillips thinks nothing of standing at his easel sixteen hours a day. He is almost a recluse and rarely leaves his studio.
Phillip's style is characterized by a fastidious attention to detail and a meticulous clarity. His images are so clean, they have been described as "blazing with a cold intensity".
It would be a mistake, however, to view Phillip's paintings as examples of photographic realism. Actually, Phillips is to contemporary art what Kafka is to symbolic fiction. Phillip's works are mesmerizing-evocative of the shadows, the whispers, the appetites, and the emotions existing in the mind's hidden regions. The streets and scenes he conjures up invariably emanate a mysterious, Kafkaesque sense of exclusion and alienation.
The world Phillips creates is far from simple. In one image, for example, an open metal gate welcomes us to a large lovely home. A cat sits on the stoop and the door is ajar, inviting us in. The image is one of architectural precision, but a closer look reveals a mismatched gate, a door with no knob, and windows with no rooms behind them-only sky and clouds. Shadows do not match the forms which cast them, or are jigsaw shaped, or are not cast at all. On one side of a boulevard, carefully spaced trees rise from manicured sod; directly on the other side, a forest rises from the pavement. The otherwise perfect smoothness and clean angles of an opulent sitting room are marred by intermittent cracks in the slate floor.
Phillip's vision is compelling to observe and complex to consider. His world is not real, but is absolutely intriguing. The elements in his work which have fascinated critics and art collectors alike, are present in his limited edition graphics, which reproduce his paintings.
Frederick Phillip's works are exhibited in several public collections, among them, the Hara Museum (Japan), the British Contemporary Art Purchases Fund (England), and the McMurdoe Collection (Australia).
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