‘Travelogue’

For artist Frederick Phillips, inspiration is found in the places he has lived, in the memories of his travels – or deep within the realms of his inner world…

Bringing together the outer world with his inner vision, in his art Frederick takes us to places we think we may have visited ourselves – or was it really just a dream? A compendium of travel-inspired oil paintings, colour drawings and limited edition prints that blend reality with the mind’s eye of this internationally-collected artist will be on exhibition at Chester Art Centre
(132 Northgate street, Chester, CH12HT, 01244313700) from September 15th to October 6th 2017. An Open Evening with artist Frederick Phillips will be held on Friday September 15th from 6.30pm to 9pm. Refreshments will be served as you meet the artist and view his unique artworks. And the artist will be talking about how his travels and the places he has lived continue to inspire his artwork on Saturday September 30th, when he will also be available to chat and sign copies of his book, “Quintessence: The Art of Frederick Phillips”.

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:

“I began by being 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”.

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 where he began exhibiting his art and soon attracted the attention of an American gallery.

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, ‘Quintessence’ – 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, Boston, Indianapolis, Michigan, Puerto Rico and Hong Kong.

Following his return to his home town in 2007, the artist continues to deal with his many collectors in the United States as well as establishing new collectors in Europe and the UK through exhibitions in Manchester, Birmingham and Stoke and Cheshire. Additionally, for two years he taught life-drawing at Staffordshire University and he was also invited to join an international panel of judges at the ICEFA competition final in the Czech Republic.

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 in Stoke where he continues to create art and plan future exhibitions.

His work is in private and corporate collections throughout the world.