'Pet, Food'
My painting came about when I was thinking about the rabbits I've met at Hillside Animal Sanctuary, and then realised that the same creatures are used to make catfood (although not for my cat Maxwell as he has been living - very healthily - off vegan food for years now). I thought that the hypocrisy of a society that adores some 'cute' animal whilst consigning other 'cute' ones to the abattoir is best shown in the pretty and pleasing style of a children's book illustration, with the distinctions we apply to our animal companions represented as literal labels around their necks. Hopefully it will make some people look twice and begin to think...
About Philip
I was born in 1970 in Malvern, Worcestershire, and by the age of four I was constantly drawing and painting - mostly pictures of dinosaurs and spaceships. I had a brief period during primary school of wanting to be either a dustbin man or a magician, but by the time I was eighteen it seemed that my direction in life (however ill-advised) was clear. I moved on from dinosaurs and magic tricks, gained a degree in illustration at Leicester Polytechnic in 1992, moved out of the city to Somerset and changed my lifestyle from vegetarian to vegan. I’ve spent the intervening years refining and exploring my chosen craft by learning how to process the experiences of everyday life through my Art. As is the case with most people’s lives, my time here has been filled with an eclectic mixture of success, failure, love, loss, confusion, clarity and cakes.
If you took a slice out of my mind you would find the flamboyance of Rufus Wainwright’s songs, the drama and joy of the Kneehigh theatre company, memories of my home on the Malvern hills, the passion of the Meninos de Morumbi drummers from Brazil, the pomposity of Peter Greenaway’s films, the eerie beauty of Antony and the Johnsons’ world, the preachings of Bill Hicks, the dark words of Samuel Beckett and the sheer childlike wonder of Royal De Luxe’s 'Giant Elephant and the Sultan's Little Girl'...
All this inspiration has ended up on paper and canvas, forming a visual diary of my life - which has now overflowed into poetry and novels too. Behind each picture is a story, expressed and shared for all to see. My work is highly personal, steadily evolving, and I’ve no idea what will happen next.
Maybe more dinosaurs.
Or spaceships.
If you took a slice out of my mind you would find the flamboyance of Rufus Wainwright’s songs, the drama and joy of the Kneehigh theatre company, memories of my home on the Malvern hills, the passion of the Meninos de Morumbi drummers from Brazil, the pomposity of Peter Greenaway’s films, the eerie beauty of Antony and the Johnsons’ world, the preachings of Bill Hicks, the dark words of Samuel Beckett and the sheer childlike wonder of Royal De Luxe’s 'Giant Elephant and the Sultan's Little Girl'...
All this inspiration has ended up on paper and canvas, forming a visual diary of my life - which has now overflowed into poetry and novels too. Behind each picture is a story, expressed and shared for all to see. My work is highly personal, steadily evolving, and I’ve no idea what will happen next.
Maybe more dinosaurs.
Or spaceships.