Leon Phillips
Vancouver, British Columbia
My work is about embodied perception explored through experimentation with the materiality of colour.
MessageLeon Phillips is a Canadian artist who lives and works on the traditional Indigenous lands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations now known as Vancouver, British Columbia. He is originally from Saskatchewan where he grew up on a farm. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (cum laude, University of Saskatchewan) and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies (School of Architecture, University of Waterloo).
Phillips work has had solo exhibitions in a number of public galleries, including the Two Rivers Gallery (Prince George), the Yukon Arts Centre (Whitehorse), and the Maple Leaf Gallery (Canadian Consulate General, Chicago). In 2013, his work and writing was featured in the international journal Cultural Politics. He is a member of the Art File Gallery at The Painting Center in New York.
Phillips has been awarded grants from the Vermont Studio Center, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He has attended a number of international residencies: the Vermont Studio Center (2018), the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2019), and the Banff Centre for Arts And Creativity (2020).
In 2021, Phillips participated in the 17th International Painting Symposium “Mark Rothko 2021” at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre (Latvia) where he produced and presented work, was included in a group exhibition at the museum (with printed catalogue) and had five paintings accepted into the museum’s permanent collection. A video interview was produced by the Center in which Phillips discusses his interests in the materiality of colour and chromophobia.
Statement
My work is about embodied perception explored through experimentation with the materiality of colour. By incorporating my body, tools and labour into my paintings, I examine the idea that a painting is not only an image but also a materially tangible presence.
I pursue a material-based logic in the studio where I see myself as a facilitator, as opposed to creator, working co-operatively with non-human objects (tools and materials) as agents to provoke images where colour is deployed for structural rather than decorative purposes.
My paintings have provoked me to ask the questions: what does it mean to be human and how can humans function in the world the way that artists inhabit their studios? Painting as presence exists in the porous zone between the human and the non-human, a zone of flux and tension where the painting’s material substrate confronts the perceptual image.
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