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Phil Whiting

Oxford
A painter who's work engages with landscape as both a physical place and a psychological space. His work excavates ideas of history and geography, place and time.
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Personal summary: "Painting the land and evoking half forgotten memories and truths is the best way I know of exploring the human condition. I have long been drawn to places of trauma, be it abandoned post industrial sites or war zones. My feelings about the physical reality of what is left moves me to paint. I am in a sense a history painter".

Louise Bourgeois: “If your need is to refuse to abandon the past, you must recreate it”.

REVIEWS:

ALBUM COVER ARTWORK FOR ‘LAMENT&LIBERATION’ , THE CHOIR OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE, 2025.                                   Editor's Choice, Gramophone Magazine, June edition 2025.                 “The cover artwork is by Phil Whiting, and is entitled ‘Sarajevo, Aleppo, Mariupol…the list goes on’. Christopher Gray (Director) encountered the work during an exhibition in Truro Cathedral and returned to it when seeking a suitable image for this album. He feels it confronts some of the worst horrors of humanity with the same uncompromising honesty as the music and poetry and is grateful to the artist for permission to use it in this context”.

CITATION ON WINNING THE RED LINE ART WORKS ANNUAL AWARD FOR 2017:                                                                                                       Phil's art incorporates big events and issues, their awful consequences and our responsibilities for them. His work raises tough questions about what we humans have done, what we have failed to do, what we have looked away from, who we really are, what we should be. This is rare and powerful art which penetrates and can leave its mark on us".

“His work engages with landscape as both a physical place as well as a psychological space.... These works excavate ideas of history and geography, place and time”. Phil Nichol, Bayart, 2008.

“Phil Whiting is a painter. His vigorous use of materials- acrylics (in thick striated impasto) inks, charcoal (ground and smeared) applied with brush, knife and 'whatever'- recalls a terrain smarting from the brute force of man's misuse of it. This is not the celebrated picturesque Cornwall we so often see but its dirty, rain-soaked underbelly, a landscape left bereft by voracious mining and haphazard industrial development. Work from Bosnia (his exhibition 'Srebrenica' transfers from the European Parliament Building to the Royal Cornwall Museum in the Spring) is also included - landscapes whose brutal past is etched into their future reminding us of the horrors mankind is capable of creating for itself”. Pip Palmer, Galleries magazine, Jan. 2007.

“Predominately black and white, they're built up with thin layers of watery paint that Whiting has splashed, dripped and poured onto the paper using expressive, gestural marks verging on abstraction. Up close, these large paintings are a confusing jumble, as if looking through a mud-spattered window. It's only when you step back, viewing from a distance, that their full power is appreciated. One of the most arresting is 'The Place of Sorrow'. Though the location is not disclosed, its sweeping panoramic view and dramatic sky is incredibly striking. 'Destroyed Muslim Houses Near Srebrenica' is another powerful, psychologically charged work contrasting sharply with the images of Cornwall such as 'Tin Mine Wasteland' or the painting of St Stythians church, its tower just visible in the distance through the drips of paint. Hard-hitting and thought-provoking, this exhibition leaves a lasting impression.” David Trigg's review of ‘Philip Whiting’ at the Bayart Contemporary Gallery Cardiff, Metro, August 2008.

"Haunting, brooding and sublime".  Frank Ruhrmund, review of Phil Whiting's 'Landscape and Memory' exhibition at the Belgrave Gallery, St Ives Times & Echo, 2nd March, 2012.

Influences: Very early on American Abstract Expressionism was important to him, especially Marc Rothko and belatedly Louise Bourgeois in who's work he discerned a profound concern with the human condition, a concern that has resonated within him throughout his career. This was enriched by his re-discovery of David Bomberg and Frank Auerbach (around 1971) and Paul Nash. In the early 80's he also found affinity with German Neo-Expressionism. He reads Modern History avidly and believes that his generation can provide that essential bridge of knowledge/experience between World War 1 and the uncertainties of today.

Career path: Born London 1948. Some earliest memories were of bomb sites seen from push chair ("I suspect these early memories have shaped the way I have viewed the world ever since"). Grew up in Hull. Left school at 15. Studied Art at Newcastle, Portsmouth and Falmouth Colleges of Art. Hitch hiked across Europe to former Yugoslavia in 1968 showing solidarity with the 'Student Movement' and 'Prague Spring' ("probably my one real achievement whilst a student at Portsmouth College of Art"). In 1974 worked in a psychiatric hospital near Leicester where he met aged survivors of the 'Great Sleeping Sickness Epidemic' which ravaged the West in the early 1920s.  In 1977 he met aid workers working for an NGO in Palestine which left him uneasy by the post colonial approach of Western powers which seemed little more than pursuing a self serving policy of immediate political expediency. Received a supportive letter from Naom Chomsky. In 1980 equipped with a sketchbook journal (a format he would from then on adopt for his many travels across the world) he travelled the length of the former Yugoslavia just after Tito died in Spring 1980:  "People extremely apprehensive about the future." In 1981 he travelled around America visiting 19 States and crossed the border into Mexico. He became deeply disturbed by witnessing the negative effects that the U.S. policy of marginalizing indigenous groups such as the Navajo and the Hopi can have on a people's identity, memory and historical narrative. He felt that in a more compassionate and imaginative world it could work both ways in that both the majority group and the minority group could learn from one another and by so doing enrich humankind's understanding of the world and our place in it. On returning to England he became determined more than ever to become a history painter in the landscape tradition believing that painting can best awaken and speak truth to power directly to a wider audience than can the spoken word. During the summer of 1985 he recognised he was beginning to suffer from the mental disorder PTSD which had developed after a girl friend and her 6 year old twin boys were callously gunned down.  After seeking help he found catharsis by using his art practice to explore such areas as the aftermath of extreme violence and war. He reallocated to Cornwall in February 1989 and embarked on a series of paintings (Landscape and Memory) inspired by Cornwall's dying rich post-industrial past. Concurrently in April 1995 at the height of the Bosnian war and whilst Co-director of a painting school in S.W. France he visited Oradour-sur-Glane with students. So moved with what he saw and disturbed by the genocidal behaviour once again taking place in the heart of Europe when we were promised ‘Never Again’ he made plans for a major project to visit sites of C20th (and later sadly C21st) trauma throughout Europe and the Middle East (later to include New York and further afield across Asia) in an attempt to find answers. His Project became known as 'Places of Mourning in the Western World'. Soon after visiting the death camps in Spain and Poland in 2005 he was commissioned to accompany the  NGO 'The Fund for Refugees in Slovenia' to Bosnia to bear witness to the aftermath of genocide as a war artist. This culminated in his residency and solo exhibition 'Srebrenica: Paintings from the Grave' held in ‘The Yehudi Menuhin Space’ in The European Parliament Building, Brussels in 2006. Since then he has been invited to give talks and exhibit his work at many institutions including Truro Cathedral, The RCM,  Oxford University, Leigh Day Human Rights Law Firm London, Hereford Cathedral, The BayArt Contemporary Gallery Cardiff, Cardiff University, The Terry Frost Gallery King's School Worcester, Monmouth School, The Sewell Centre Gallery Radley College, etc, and has received  commissions for his work by organisations and institutions such as The Guardian, English Heritage, The NHS, Amnesty International, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Truro Cathedral, etc.

He relies solely on sponsorship and sales to finance his work which in turn has raised thousands of pounds for good causes while helping to raise awareness of them.

Phil continues to paint and travel extensively in his search for subject matter. In recent years he has embarked on many overland painting expeditions accompanied by his wife Emma travelling through such places as the Balkans, Central and Western Europe, Siberia, Mongolia, China, Nepal, the Middle East, the Arctic Circle, New Zealand and briefly Australia.

FURTHER REVIEWS:

"Haunting paintings", Lee Trewhela, Editor Arts and Leisure, West Briton Newspapers.

"Here, I feel, is an artist who takes as a start important historical subjects and events and transmutes and transforms them, in his personal way, into poetical and magnificent paintings", Roman Halter, artist and Holocaust survivor.

"Sombre but necessary paintings - testimony of an immutable recent history", Professor Paul Gough, UWE, Bristol.

 

OVER THE FIELDS AND FAR AWAY

AFTER AUSCHWITZ: THE LONG WAY HOME

"IF YOUR NEED IS TO REFUSE TO ABANDON THE PAST, YOU MUST RECREATE IT" Louise Bourgeois

GHOST SHIP OFF NANJIZAL

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION.

BROTHERS

A MOTHER OF SREBRENICA

A MOTHER OF SREBRENICA

MARY LOOKING AT ME

FINDING MOMENTS OF SOLACE: UKRANIAN REFUGEE ANICHKA DRAWING IN IFFLEY CHURCHYARD

ANNE THE OLD JEWISH LADY BY THE SEA AT MARAZION

ALEHA HOMESICK FOR EGYPT

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