Philip Lee

PHILIP LEE

Born 5.5.48 in Woolwich, London to an English father and Italian mother.

Lived and worked in England, Wales, Italy and Germany, in a wide range of professions – Designer in Plastics, Garden Designer, 15^th Century Painting Restorer, Assistant Manager of a Shipping Office, Container Controller for Europe, Teacher of Art, Horticulture and Maths in State and Special Needs schools, etc. Having retired from teaching I have returned to working as a Professional Artist.

LANDCSAPES

My pastel landscapes are a celebration of the living natural world. I want to share with others the same sense of delight that I experience when looking at the world around me. I try to achieve this by giving my subjects a rich surface texture, freely painted, yet true to nature. The tapestry of mark making and the illusion of realism are like the world around us – a constantly changing blend of order and chaos.

SURREAL

Its not just dreams that are fragments of memory all mixed up; memory works in the same way in our waking life. In my surreal work I link various bits of memory, re-ordering the chaotic pieces into an alternative whole, another reality. The later Deluge series sees the addition of ambiguity to the mix – these paintings pose not only the question : why are these things positioned together? But also : what are they?

FIGURE

The figure and dance pictures try to show something more in people than their outward appearance. We are not superimposed onto a background in our daily lives, we operate within our world and the world affects us. In my figures the background or life-context flows with and through the figures, adding a sense of time, movement and belonging.

Education

1965 - 66 Folkestone School of Art

1966 Gloucestershire College of Art

1979 - 82 Christchurch College, Canterbury

Exhibitions

1971 Piazza Santa Restituta, Ischia, Italy : One-man show

1971 Ischia Ponte, Italy : One-man show

1971 Posseidon, Ischia, Italy : One-man show

1971 Munich Christmas Fayre, Germany

1975 Town Hall, Nieder-Olm , Germany

1978 Two surreal paintings published by Science Fiction Monthly

1981 Kent University, England : One-man show