ABOUT ME
Always looking, Phyllis Chillingworth translates profound moments into impactful paintings. She gives the viewer a new window into how she sees. Her clarity of vision and unique color sense bring us fascination.
Phyllis Chillingworth’s art translates profound moments into impactful paintings. Her work gives the viewer a new window into how she views the world. Through her clarity of vision and use of unique color, Phyllis’ work brings up a sense of fascination for the world around us.
Each painting is a story, a distillation of an astounding experience. In the process of deepening the moment into something more lasting, she often explores the subject in drawing, watercolor and collage.
Over time the moment grows into a kind of love affair, no longer fleeting. She welcomes the viewer into their own journey of seeing.
While her inspiration starts with life around her, she moves away from reality with her own sense of composition, shifting perspective and color-sensation inviting us to see beyond the immediate view. In her paintings there is always the importance of drawing, the energy of gesture and the depth of process.
Her long journey as a designer and an explorer of life fuels her creativity; often in her work is an underlying symbolism.
As she states:
“There is much more on my brushes than pigment.”
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
-Marcel Proust
Phyllis lives in NYC and in Montauk. Her paintings have been featured in
many shows at Atlantic Gallery, NYC and on Long Island: Artists Alliance of
East Hampton, Ashawagh Hall and Guild Hall, East Hampton, The Depot
Art Gallery and Lucore Arts, both in Montauk and at Concord Arts, MA.
Chillingworth holds a BFA/MFA from The Yale School of Art and a BS from
The Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Phyllis has
studied painting with Ophrah Shemesh in NYC, Amy Wynne, RI and at
Visual Arts Italy in Gaeta, Italy.
MEDIA
the process
According to Phyllis, the backstory fuels one’s path forward. She comes from an experimental design education, The Institute of Design, IIT. As a graphic designer, she was always visually editing, finding the ‘essence’ of everything.
In these oil paintings, she is contrasting elusive thin layers of pigment with more opaque-pounding of paint. She has a ‘craving for flatness’ while at the same time enticing the viewer to shift perspective and to experience drama and space in the composition.
Drawing has always played an essential role for Phyllis, keeping the ‘energy of gesture’ always present. By making black and white miniatures, she finds the ‘architecture’ -or- composition jumps forward. Keeping the original intent, she often explores the moment in watercolor and sometimes collage. Living with a subject awhile strengthens my connection and enables her to distill what is essential.
Lastly, what is important to Phyllis, is color sensation. How the color of one shape affects another creating luminescence. She is more interested in the color-interaction than what the actual color is in reality.
Phyllis says she seeks impact and fascination while always letting the process show itself.
