about Philip.

How it all began

I have always specialised in and loved the built environment, both as a professionally qualified chartered surveyor and as an artist of over 30 years.

Having started out working for the internationally renowned master stone mason and wood carver Dick Reid OBE, I was privileged enough to have been involved in the restoration of some of Britain’s finest historic buildings. This opportunity, working alongside some of our best craftsmen in Dick’s workshops in York, reaffirmed my early love for great historic architecture.

My early travels

Many of these buildings were inspired by the early Grand Tours of Europe. After university, I took off with my pen & ink on my own Grand Tour, taking me through Italy, via Venice, Florence, and Rome, before crossing to Egypt and down the Nile, as far south as Abu Simbel. I eventually returned via the Dalmatian coast, pretty much sustained on a diet of daily pen &ink and pizza!

Drawing on location

These days I still travel, but in a touch more comfort. With my trusty drawing box, a few sketchbooks and a small portable stool (it took me quite a few years to work out the comfort factor and not having to sit on a hard dirty stone step!).

My drawing box was remodelled out of my maternal grandmother’s 1950’s portable oil painting easel and palette, which I inherited.  She was a talented amateur oil painter and perhaps that is where my passion for drawing came from.

Why drawing?

By drawing and sketching one gains a special appreciation not achieved through other faster mediums, like photography. As even Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 - 2004), the greatest and probably most famous French photographer noted, "Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation." Or as another of my favourite painters, David Hockney (born 1937), put it so beautifully, "Drawing takes time. A line has time in it."

If I ever go to a gallery or blockbuster famous artist’s show, I will always seek out the glass showcases with the artist’s sketchbooks in them. As Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) describes it, "Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality."