James Phillips: The Pattern Plays the Mind opens on Saturday, January 10, with a reception from 2-5pm, the artist will be in attendance.
Phillips' paintings of the last five decades draw on traditional African pattern, symbolism, and mythology to form a style of contemporary painting that defies categorization. His signature painting technique of interweaving planes of saturated color brings a three-dimensional quality to the painted surface, where visual and auditory experiences merge.
The Pattern Plays the Mind presents paintings on canvas and paper from 1994 to present. Works on canvas hang like banners, the fluidity of composition and motion of the canvas reflecting the natural world in action – movement, breath, sound, and sight. Paintings on heavy paper employ a range of spiraling and mandala-like forms, with a constancy of action and energy.
James Phillips was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1945, and spent his early years in rural Virginia. He studied at Fleisher Art Memorial School in Philadelphia in the 1960s, the Philadelphia College of Art (University of the Arts for Philadelphia) from 1964 to 1965, followed by a brief affiliation with the Lee Cultural Center in 1968. Phillips then attended the Printing Trade School in New York City. In 1969, he became a member of the Harlem-founded Weusi Artist Collective, a group of young artists who made African iconic imagery and symbols a central part of their work. In 1970 Phillips became a member of AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a group committed to incorporating African aesthetics, iconography and positive political imagery into African American art which is still active today. In 1971-72 he participated in the artist residency program at the Studio Museum, and in 2022 was the inaugural Joshua Johnson Council Artist in Residence sponsored by the Baltimore Museum of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art.
Phillips has participated in over seventy group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally; he has completed public art projects for the city of Baltimore, Howard University, the Philadelphia Airport, the New York City Department of Parks, and the City of San Francisco transit system. His work is represented in public collections including the Arts in Embassies Collection in Togo (West Africa), Brooklyn Museum, Hampton University Art Collection, National Gallery of Art, New York City Public Library, The Phillips Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
James Phillips: The Pattern Plays the Mind is the artists’ inaugural exhibition with Hemphill Artworks, Washington DC.