Sunday, April 4, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
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P.K. Phillips is a visual artist who has been working for over 25 years. She currently lives and works in Lahaina, Maui.
For the years I worked as an actress in Hollywood doing movies, commercials and television, I had a simple exercise that I would employ before I performed. I imagined that I walked through a waterfall, and in doing so I was able to leave all the rules, regulations and confines of everyday "rational" life. On the other side of that waterfall where I entered, was a place where anything was possible. I could be anyone, and anything, and the rules were suspended.
As an abstract painter, I also walk through the waterfall each time I approach a canvas, and give myself full permission to allow to come to the surface anything and everything that organically needs to breathe. The paintings inform me of what needs to be said, or not said, and a dialog begins between the images, myself, and those who experience them.
Beauty is an important element to my current work, and I find it necessary at this time in my life and work to allow it to just be in the work, as that was a very strong component to what surfaced in the work after not having painted on a regular basis for some 6 years.
Certain elements and sensibilities have always been present in my work, even as a teenager, and I find as I get older, we tend to circle back to that which we know best, and what works for us best, and frankly, gives us pleasure.
In my new paintings starting in 2009 and continuing, I find that the images are sharing a story with me about the journey I take when I paint. These images are like postcards, which are sent to my consciousness and present themselves on the canvas as dreamy, beautiful and sensual young women and flowers that seem to speak to traveling in exotic locations. Since I suffer from an anxiety disorder, and have trouble traveling in real time anymore, I find that I am traveling in my mind through the paintings, sending home to myself these images that assemble like postcards from a travel diary, and in essence, I am able to travel and move about the world in any fashion I choose, as anyone I choose to be, much like walking through the waterfall.