Tom Phillips (artist)

Tom Phillips CBE RA (born 25 May 1937) is an English artist. He was born in London, where he continues to work. He is a painter, printmaker and collagist.

Trevor Thomas Phillips was born on 24 May 1937 in Clapham, London, the younger of two sons. His mother ran a ten-roomed boarding house and his father speculated in cotton futures. His family called him Tom.

In 1940 the cotton market collapsed and the family had to sell their home. Phillips' father went to work in Aberystwyth, leaving his wife to run a small boarding house in London. After the war the family finances improved and they were able to holiday annually in France and Germany. His parents began to buy short leasehold properties as investments and although these did not yield the return that they wished his mother did buy the freehold of one house, which would later become her son's studio and home.

From 1942 to 1947 Phillips attended Bonneville Road Primary School in Clapham. Whilst he was there he claims that he "learned the word artist and discovered that an artist is someone who does not have to put his paints away, so decided to become one". Although he enjoyed school he was noted his fascination with drawing and his refusal to conform. His mother recalled him buying a platform ticket every Sunday and taking long railway journeys when he was just eleven. In that year he progressed to Henry Thornton Grammar School, Clapham, where he developed his love of music, playing violin and bassoon in the school orchestra and singing solo baritone in school concerts and stage events. In 1954 he exhibited paintings for the first time, in an open art show on the railings of the Thames Embankment. A year later, at seventeen, he won a travelling scholarship to France, and lived there for three months. His mother remembers him returning to London with a sack of horse bones from the first World War, but more significantly he bought himself a piano and started to teach himself to play. In 1957 he became a founder member of the Philharmonia Chorus.

From 1958 to 1960 Phillips read English Literature and Anglo Saxon at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He attended life drawing classes at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, acted in plays and designed and illustrated the Isis magazine. Upon graduation he taught Art, Music and English at Aristotle Road School, Brixton, London. He also attended evening classes in life drawing (under Frank Auerbach), and sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts, where he became a full-time student in 1961. When he graduated in 1964 his work was selected for that year's Young Contemporaries Exhibition in London and in the following year the AIA Galleries in London exhibited his first one-man show. While studying at Camberwell Phillips married Jill, and their daughter Ruth was born in 1964. Their second child was a son, Leo.

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