Guy Phillips Exhibition

Noho Gallery / M55

poster for Guy Phillips Exhibition

This event has ended.

In 1969 Guy Phillips left Sydney with his wife Cathie for Europe to pursue a career as a painter. This decision did not come entirely out of the blue. Earlier in his advertising career he had worked in layout and design and there were artists in the family, notably the impressionist Emmanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915).

He and Cathie, they lived in Florence and then in London at the end of the Swinging Sixties. He took part time art classes at Sir John Cass College in the East End, worked in a pub and painted pub signs and and Cathie ran a stall at Portobello Market.

Phillips saw his first Francis Bacon painting at the Marlborough Gallery and he found it a revelation. At his own 1972 solo show in London at the Prudhoe Gallery, the British Art Review described his nudes as “an extraordinary mixture of relaxation and taut strength, their force and vigor make an impact like Francis Bacon’s figures.”

On returning to Sydney in 1972, he had two successful solo shows at the Hogarth Gallery. At that point the Sydney art world hung obsessively on news from the New York art scene and when an opportunity to move to the US came up, Phillips decided that, if he was to continue with the difficult business of being an artist, he would go to the center.

By now a family of three, they moved to Westport, Connecticut, buying an 1840 house that was the former home of Van Wyck Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who had been featured on a Time magazine cover.

Cathie worked for Gerry Mulligan, the jazz musician, composer and arranger, for many years.

When new friends bought an indoor tennis club,. Guy got the job as manager and later becoming a partner. He is also still an avid tennis player.

Phillips leads a double life. Most of the club members have no idea he is a painter.

He has sold privately and overseas and recently produced a 15-foot wide multi-figure cutout commission for an Australian collection.

He has assembled a large body of work - paintings, cutouts and prints, based mainly on the figure. He likes to think that his figures, mostly hard-edge, with flat, solid color, are an original way of showing the human form.

Media

Schedule

from November 29, 2016 to December 17, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-12-03 from 16:00 to 18:00

Artist(s)

Guy Phillips

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