Coutesy of the artist
Born 1979, Roanoke, Virginia
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
Matt Phillips received his BA in Art History from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and his MFA in Painting from Boston University. His recent solo exhibitions include The Fores Project, London, England; The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, Virginia; Direktorenhaus Museum, Berlin, Germany; One River Gallery, Englewood, New Jersey; Devening Projects, Chicago, Illinois. He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Phillips is also a curator, critic and professor of art at FIT in New York City.
Phillips plays with color, simple shades, form and light in his abstract paintings. The artist mixes silica with pastel-hued pigments to create rippling wave-like patterns across the surface.
“In my own paintings, I try to hold and release time for the viewer. Many of my works have no preconceived image or preliminary drawings. Instead, I just begin working directly on a canvas. Then, by adjusting the composition, revising color, painting over and correcting, a painting begins to tighten its orbit around a subject. This process mirrors music composition, in which disparate notes are found, revised and placed into sequence until they create tension and resonance”