JRP Studio

New Work. New Blog.

2010-11-29T09:18:00.003-08:00

One third of our lives  are spent sleeping—

and dreams are laced  through all our nights.

John Ransom Phillips, through the persona of civil war photographer Mathew Brady, invades the dreams of Illustrious Americans and brings along acquaintances such as Andy Warhol and Dick Cheney to pique, amuse, and disturb his readers. http://americandreambook.net

New Work. New Blog.

2010-11-29T09:18:00.001-08:00

One third of our lives  are spent sleeping—

and dreams are laced  through all our nights.

An Artist's Migration

2010-09-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

John Phillip's Former Studio
This was Johns studio Warren Street before his planned move uptown. He sold this space and needed somewhere to paint.

John is now painting in his former cramped kitchen space while waiting for his uptown studio to be finished.

By the end of the year this renovation to his new space will be finished and John will move in and grandly paint again. Notice the incredible skylights,

2010-08-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

Parts and Smoke at Chickamauga
2007 oil on canvas 20 x 30

From August 8 to through August 15 2010 you can vote for this painting at the Saatchi Showdown.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=280336

Watercolor Donation to Albany Institute

2010-07-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Matthew Feldman Esq. of Lewiston NYhas donated a John Ransom Phillips watercolor from his family collection to the Albany Institute titled
"I arrived late at the battlefield: the unpleasantness was gone no death, but reflection and quiet. It is the look of the landscape where history was made. You are seeing what I am seeing. I preceded you. "

Exhibition Opening Photos June 19th

2010-06-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Exhibition Opening Photos June 19th Ransoming Mathew Brady:
Re-Imagining the Civil War Albany Institute of Art

Photos: Steve Ricci

This exhibition, at Albany Institute of Art, includes over 25 works inspired by Mathew Brady and his Civil War photography.

Ransoming Mathew Brady will run through October 3, 2010

Albany Institute of History & Art
125 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12210
Tel: 518.463.4478
E-mail: information@albanyinstitute.org

Friday Opening at the Opalka Gallery

2010-06-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

Mathew Brady As He Would Like To Be Remembered (detail)
2006 oil on canvas 50x40"

Phillips Painting Rests in Hotel

2010-05-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Crescent Hotel in San Francisco has put John Phillips’s The Family Bed on permanent exhibition in the lobby.

The painting can be seen at:

The Crescent Hotel San Francisco
http://www.crescentsf.com/
417 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 400-0500

For more on the subject of art venue .
http://ransomingbrady.blogspot.com/2010/05/

Opalka Gallery Show June-July

2010-05-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

Searching for Celebrity: Recent Paintings by John Ransom Phillips

June 4-July 30, 2010

Reception: Friday, June 4, 5-9pm
The Sage Colleges, Opalka Gallery
140 New Scotland Avenue Albany, NY 12208
518 292 7742 -- www.sage.edu/opalka/

Gallery summer hours (June & July) Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm.
Saturdays, -- June 5 and June 19,from Noon- 6pm.
closed July 2-5

Migrating North

2010-05-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

John has begun packing up his paintings in anticipation of the move of his home and studio from 52 Warren st. to 58th st. on the East side.

The working area will be flooded with natural light and the other areas are very elegant.

John Phillips is Selling His Egyptian Abode

2010-04-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

New Life - John is selling his house in Egypt: He has finished with his "lives" in Egypt and is now pursuing another "life" in China.

Artist's Villa for Sale / Rent in Luxor, Egypt
http://www.artistvilla.net/

The villa is on the western bank of Luxor beautifully located directly across the Nile from Luxor Temple&Winter Palace Hotel ( 5 minute ride by motorboat )& 3 minute walk to the villa , and 20 min taxi ride to all the important monuments on West bank ( Villa of Kings , etc).

He plans to visit China next fall

Phillips At the Saatchi Showdown

2010-04-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

Brady - Photography as Performance
Saatchi showdown competition.

Don’t miss your chance to vote on this work.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=263457

Showdown ends April 12 2010

Phillips Returns

2010-03-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

Phillips Returns – Attends Book Awards

John Phillips returned from Egypt last week and attended readings for The National Book Critics Circle awards. Wendy Doniger, friend and contributing author to 3 of John's books, was nominated for her non-fiction work, The Hindus. Heartfelt congratulations to her on the well-deserved honor!

Olpalka Works

2010-03-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

Note from Egypt to Albany.
Brady of Broadway: Searching for Celebrity at Opalka will exhibit both oils and watercolors, including the dynamic composition for 5-panels, Photography as Performance.

Olpalka gallery in Albany, June 4-July 30, 2010

More about Brady of Broadway: http://ransomingbrady.blogspot.com/2010/03/brady-of-broadway.html

Phillips Travels Back to Egypt

2010-03-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

John Ransom Phillips has gone back to his house in Egypt to continue his spiritual and artistic explorations.

Further Information:
BOD Phillips and Companions will Eye Ay
Phillips Off to Egypt

Brady Exhibition Scheduled

2010-02-26T11:39:00.000-08:00

Preliminary dates have been set for the Matthew Brady battlefield series at the Albany Institute of History & Art.
This show is slated for June 19th through the October 3, 2010.

More details as they become available.

More About Brady: http://ransomingbrady.blogspot.com/

Brady of Broadway at the Olpalka Gallery

2010-02-02T17:21:00.000-08:00

Brady Through a Glass Door, 2006,
oil on canvas, 70×40 inches

Brady of Broadway returns to his roots upstate to show at the well-designed Olpalka gallery in Albany, June 4-July 30, 2010. Still working out details but oils and watercolors will portray status and celebrity as staged by the 19th century photographer.

Hawass at the American University in Cairo

2010-01-30T13:26:00.001-08:00

The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass spoke at the American University in Cairo last week about new discoveries at Giza and Komel-Dikka.

Buy John's new book!!!

Morgan Library Declines Papyrus Works

2010-01-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

Barbara Fultz, long time collector of John Ransom Phillips and Tribeca business woman recently offered to donate three works on papyrus from the Book of the Dead series to the Morgan Library. This series is beautifully illustrated in Phillips recent publication “A Contemporary Book of the Dead”

The Morgan Library turned down her offer.

More: Morgan Spurns Works

John Ransom Phillips moderates: Erick Hawkins Aesthetics

2010-01-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

Join John Ransom Phillips as he discusses the Hawkins aesthetic with dance critic, Anna Kisselgoff; Hawkins mask designer and visual artist, Ralph Lee; lighting designer, Chenault Spence; and conductor, Joel Thome.

Poet, philosopher and modern dance pioneer Erick Hawkins developed an integrated life-art philosophy far ahead of his time.

Date & Time: Sat, Jan 9, 2010, 2:30pm-4:00pm
Location: Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
For More Information: 92nd Street Y

Advance copies have arrived!

2009-12-17T11:19:00.001-08:00

Anticipating the release of John Ransom Phillips: Ransoming Brady in April. Several advance copies arrived while I was away in Egypt. Lovely to behold! It is gratifying to know that the studio's efforts created such a fine book. Couldn't have managed it without Nik, Caroline and Donna. and of course special thanks to Alan T.... looking forward to working together again soon...

Peter Franks on Ransoming Mathew Brady

2009-12-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

Chair as Self-Portrait, 2005, oil on canvas, 62×46 inches

In his latest series of paintings and drawings John Ransom Phillips trains his psychologically keen and historically informed eye on a figure at once central and peripheral to American art, the photographer Matthew Brady.

Reflecting on Brady’s notable but in some regard overrated role in the photographic documentation of the Civil War, as well as his prominence before and after as a New York-based portrait photographer whose clientele was top-heavy in the rich and famous, Phillips teases out the pathos, and the bathos, underlying Brady’s artistic achievement and social persona.

As well, Phillips casts Brady against the figure of Walt Whitman, contrasting the poet’s bold aesthetic and personal gesture against the photographer’s more conventional social role—a role that, nonetheless, Brady’s artistic achievement transcended.
Phillips proffers this dialectic as a quintessentially American problem in art: the bold or the safe? The challenging or the acceptable?
Thoreau or Emerson?
Ives or MacDowell?
Ginsberg or Warhol?

—Peter Frank, Art Critic and Senior Curator for Riverside Art Museum

Egyptian Travelogue: Sitting down with Emily on the Nile

2009-12-17T11:16:00.000-08:00

I am finishing my journey with Emily much earlier than I had contemplated. But it has been so good, so full of adventure that I will miss the daily connection and its intensity.

The last hour underlined a special kind of creativity for the last week. I have been collecting bits and pieces of information, parts of poems, random thoughts on Emily by others or myself.

I had no idea how I could use these when at the conclusion of our writing together (me acting more as a scribe) this poem began to emerge, coordinating all of these leftovers that before had no home.

was i not self-published?
you say my punctuation is ambiguous
and my capitalization capricious
but i know what i am doing
these poems shift and change,
lean right or left according to whom they are addressed
they live in letters, breathe as objects,
manifest fully with multiple perspectives
you can read them, but don’t edit them
their line breaks are for your eye, not your sense of propriety

Egyptian Travelogue: Emily and Papyrus

2009-12-17T11:12:00.000-08:00

I am reading Emily Dickinson and feel her presence not only across my glass table but everywhere I venture, though crowds still seem to eclipse her. We are in a different landscape from Amherst.

In the process of fathoming her poetry; I feel enormously the need to push beyond paper. Papyrus as I have discovered is a perfect medium to express dimensionality/new circumferences. When I portray a house, rendered more or less in its actual existence on paper, I am pleased with its external dimensions.

When I portray the same image on papyrus, I seem invited to "open up" the image through wiping, rubbing and blotting. Using gum Arabic rather than water assures a torrent of image obliterating liquid that will not destroy the fibers of the papyrus, but will create the capacity to get inside the house without leaving its outside existence.

After blotting, I see images fading into the fibers thus providing me an opportunity to obliterate the image and celebrate its after images as something closer to the content of what I want. The house becomes a home. " Nature is a Haunted House—but Art is a House that tries to be Haunted." In other words, paper provides a surface reliability; papyrus celebrates dimension or in Emily’s case, larger circumferences.

Egyptian Travelogue: Working with Papyrus

2009-12-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

What I like about papyrus is its receptivity to blotting, even eviscerating the image and leaving but its ghost. Unfortunately I had no really good rags for rubbing here in Luxor. so I had to use my underwear.

T shirts were less effective than underpants but I could get marvelous effects from both. Hanes proved superior to Calvin Klein.

Gradually my underwear began to take on the look of large, spontaneous watercolors; blotting, pressing and rubbing had left residues of the painted images and I began to wear these cast off garments when I felt lonely.

if you look closely, you will see the original painted images imprinted on Calvin Klein, Hanes and some cheap brand that is undecipherable. even more do these colored shapes come alive when I move (size 34 underpants, medium t shirt and medium tank top).