“In my work, I hope to convey to the viewer the beauty and exhilaration of flight.” Bill Phillips’ words speak of a goal which he renews with each painting. Indeed, Phillips’ paintings often pull the viewer into the action by his technique of blurring the foreground. As the landscape rushes by, the viewer feels the exhilaration of which Phillips talks.
Born in 1945, Phillips became a member of the Air Force Art Program as a young artist, and his work hangs in numerous public and private collections throughout the world. He’s logged hours in F106’s, F-15’s, RF-4’s, to name a few, and spent a tour of duty in the Air Force, which included an assignment at Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam.
Phillips claims a hereditary calling to art. His father was a fine painter and cartoonist, but chose the theatre as his career. As for Bill, he has had a love affair with flight from the days when he was 12 and would spend his afternoons watching Air National Guard F-86’s take off and land at the Van Nuys (California) Airport. Never believing he could make a career of art, however, Phillips chose to major in criminology in college and had been accepted into law school. One afternoon he hung four of his paintings in a restaurant; before the third was up he had sold them all. That was all it took to convince him that his future lay not in legal practice but aviation art.
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