Reclining Nude

Phillip received a BFA degree in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri in 1972. Studied two years under painting department chairman, Wilbur Niewald. While attending school in Kansas City he became intrigued with the impressionist school of painting and their use of nature as a source of information for their work. Using the infinite variations of nature in the still life, figure and landscape, the artist is presented with limitless subject matter. Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and other painters of nature were earlier influences on Phillip's work. Dealing with ever-changing elements of nature, movement of light and shadow in the landscape, field workers finishing their tasks, Phillip adopted a broken color style of applying paint to his canvas. This approach allowed the image on the canvas to be developed quickly, and all at one time.

Phillip has lived and painted in the Northwest since 1989. His long desire to paint the subject matter of the impressionists painters and his belief that beautiful subject matter increases the probability of painting beautiful paintings, inspired two painting trips to Mexico and ten trips to Europe. In April of 2007, April of 2008 and again in 2014, a rented boat on the Canal du Midi, France served as a form of transportation, a floating studio and hotel.  Early painting trips to France, England, and Spain were shared adventures with English painter Jeffrey Pratt. 
 
Over the years the plein air painting trips yielded many wonderful experiences, a few truly successful paintings, a significant number of unsuccessful works, but importantly a wealth photos to be used later in Phillip's studio.