Phil and Joan World

Home of Phil Sylvester, Joan Findlay, Pheo Guitars, Drawing Studio

Phil and Joan World Main Pages

Phil Sylvester galleries

Drawings

I began drawing in my mid twenties having never before considered being a visual artist. The New York painter, Jerry Buchanan, the best teacher I have ever had, got me started drawing in 1979, while I was a grad student in architecture. Buchanan's teaching was neither technique nor criticism based, so, from a technical standpoint, I am self taught. Drawing has always been my core art, informing all my other work. The drawings are observation based and are created in various media; charcoal, graphite, ink, paint, and digital media. From 2006 until 2010 I created many drawings for David Biespiel's Poetry Northwest magazine. My drawn work has also been shown in a number of galleries.

Paintings

Soon after starting to draw, I began experimenting with paint. My first ten years work in painting was observation based. After that I moved toward full on abstraction. I paint both in oils and acrylics and my work often includes other media through collage and drawing. The paintings are improvisations and are meant to be experienced visually rather than intellectually. They have no narrative, no hidden concepts or ideas to get. They do, however, often include many elements that have associations in my life.

Junk Paintings

In 1993, at a point when my more conventional painting was reaching a blocked place, I began experimenting with building my paintings primarily with found objects. The paintings became elaborate reliefs, still viewed frontally, still hung for the most part, dealing with all the same issues of color, scale, composition, and association that had driven my previous work, but through new means. The junk paintings led to my first experiments in guitar building. The first guitars were essentially junk paintings that functioned.

Phil Sylvester galleries

Contact
Home