Frederick Phillips
Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1953, Frederick Phillips attended Burslem
College of Art where he studied Fine Art under Arthur Berry and
graduated in 1974. Following successful exhibitions in the Midlands, in
1981 he moved to London and began exhibiting his work at galleries there.
In 1990 he was awarded an ‘Artist of Exceptional Merit’visa by the USA and
moved to Chicago where he lived and worked for 17 years. In 1996 he was
invited to lecture on ‘Dream and Reality in Art’ at the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago and in 2000 a book on his life and his art was
published in America.
Exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held in London, Chicago, New
York, Los Angeles, Boston, Indianapolis, Michigan, Puerto Rico and Hong
Kong. Although he continues to exhibit some work in galleries within the
United States, in 2007 he returned to his home town and has since taught
life-drawing for 2 years at Staffordshire University as well as exhibiting his
paintings in Manchester, Birmingham and Stoke.
In April 2016, the artist was one of the first to move his studio into the
ACAVA Artists’ Studios at the former Spode Works pottery factory where
he continues to paint. His work is in private and corporate collections
throughout the world.
Frederick Phillips is a painter for today who uses the techniques of the past
to create the masterpieces of the future. Dedicated to the craft and
tradition of oil-painting, even his Limited Edition Prints are created to
archival museum-grade standards. His atmospheric paintings are like half
remembered dream images, glimpsed briefly as we awaken. As the artist
himself has noted:
“Originally, I was inspired by the Surrealists, and even today my paintings are not
realistic portraits of the world about me. My work is about memory; I don’t paint
what I see, but the memory of what I have seen”