Richard Phillips: Early Works on Paper

by Richard Phillips (Artist)

The years 1993 and 1994 were bum years for Richard Phillips. Creative years too, since that was when he made the 30-odd drawings in this portfolio. With the air so cold and the heat not working and the rent going unpaid for eight months, Phillips, drawing in his kitchen, conjured one image after another: a homeless man is burned alive by a thug; a deranged blonde cuddles with a white rabbit, certain they must be sisters; a monumental god carved into a temple at Angkor Wat mirrors the face of Alice Cooper--two gods in one! Phillips' sources were discarded newspapers, but if you look behind the mottled surfaces the pictures really derive from the conflicted state of his soul.
Each of these drawings is a complete work; none were intended only as studies. "They were meant to be entertaining," Phillips tells author Linda Yablonsky, "but they also pushed me to go farther and farther." Ultimately, these drawings gave Phillips the freedom to paint. What they give us is the power to see through the dark.

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Born in Massachusetts in 1962, Richard Phillips lives and works in New York. Phillips is known for his large-scale glossy hyper-realistic paintings, recalling the pictorial style of magazines from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and reflecting traditions of popular image culture. His paintings represent close-up portraits, predominantly of women from fashion and soft porno magazines, but also persons from the fields of pop music and politics. He says "My pictures involve a kind of wasted beauty - that's always been a thread in my work."