Tim Phillips is poised for flight. At just 23, he has been named the winner of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship, and, consequently, is about to embark on a journey that is supposed to be formative. All the cliches are there: the world is his oyster. And yet…
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Phillips may be about to soar on the great European adventure so many young artists long for, but his feet are still firmly on the ground. He’s just a year and a half out of art school, and already, he’s worrying about the future. Brett Whiteley would be ashamed! Or perhaps he’d be proud? Phillips doesn’t much mind, he’s just keeping his head down and working hard. It was, he says, his work ethic - driven by mild panic about what it actually means to be a starving artist - that drove him to apply for the scholarship in the first place.
But it was still a huge shock when he won. The scholarship is open to any artist aged 20 to 30, and no experience is necessary. Still, most previous winners have been over 25, and many have shown their work and are represented by galleries. Phillips had never had a show, or written an artist statement. He just sent in his work and hoped for the best. It was the second time he had entered, the first being during his 2012 honours year.
“I was definitely not surprised when I didn’t win then. I was actually quite shocked when I found out I was shortlisted,” he says.
“You have to send in a Powerpoint of 10 images and half of mine were just, like, shit. You can put that in!”
But last year - his year of getting things done - he applied again and was thrilled to be shortlisted once more. And then, close to the announcement, he received a call from the panel informing him he was in the top three. He was, he says, urged to attend to the announcement in Sydney. But he baulked.
“They told me that I was in the top three and needed to be at the announcement - I couldn’t go all the way to Sydney to watch somebody else win,” he said.
“I told them on the phone, ‘I’m not really sure because I’m from Canberra so I’ll have to get work off'.”
He did then and still does work at the Pancake Parlour, that divey Canberra institution. But the panel insisted, and he relented, driving up to Sydney with his mother and sister for the announcement. And he won.
“It was great but then it was all over in a couple of hours, so we drove home and I actually had work the next morning. It was soaring high and crashing low,” he says, laughing. The whole situation – the stark reality of being a young artist coupled with the dreamlike reality of winning a major painting prize – just seems so odd, as we sit in a shady courtyard in one of Canberra’s arts precincts.
And, adding to the surreal quality of the conversation, Phillips has no idea of what the judges found so captivating in his work.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if they mentioned anything about what it was. I actually can’t answer that question,” he says.
He could find out, of course - the citation is on the Art Gallery of NSW website. But Phillips dislikes reading anything about himself.
“I actually never read any of the press or anything like that, because I just find it a bit awkward. I don’t know if I’ll read this either,” he says, laughing apologetically. “I have a Facebook but I delete it all the time, and I’m not on Twitter.”
For the record, one the 2013 award’s judges, artist Euan Macleod, said of Phillips’ work: “The beauty and subtle technique of Tim’s work gave him the edge for me … I was impressed at how he is working within the very traditional genre of still life but in a very personal way: finding a way to make it his own.”
It’s a useful summing up of Phillips’ style, especially since he’s not comfortable describing it himself. He has never written an artist’s statement - the beauty of the Brett Whiteley scholarship is that only paintings are required - and doesn’t even like referring himself as an “artist”, preferring instead just “painter”.
And this hasn’t even always been the case. He doesn’t recall being a particularly arty kid.
“A lot of people get asked that question and they sort of answer - ‘oh yeah, I’ve always only ever drawn or painted’. But that wasn’t the case,” he says.
“I have always liked drawing, but the thing is, all kids like drawing. I can’t really say I was special in that. And as a teenager I didn’t really draw anything. I didn’t actually do art in high school, but then I did do art in college, kind of on a whim, sort of to fill an elective, but also because I thought it could be something I might like.”
The rest is history, really, albeit a short one. He doesn’t know of any family members with an artistic bent, “or anyone in any creative field - it’s just my thing”. He was born in country South Australia, and moved with his family to live in the Falkland Islands when he was six. His father worked for a few years there as a solicitor, at a time when, he says, the population was “about 2000, and then, like, 1000 military”.
They returned to Australia in 2000 and settled in Canberra. It was his art teacher at Hawker College who encouraged him to apply to the ANU School of Art school, which he did, choosing painting with drawing as a backup, in case he didn’t get in. He did, and graduated with honours in 2012.
And now, less than two years later, he’s on his way to Europe for the first time. While he hesitates to describe his own art - at the moment he paints only still life - he’s happy to reel off his influences.
“It’s always changing, I really love Morandi and I really love Philip Guston, I really love Picasso,” he says. And he’ll get to see many of these artists’ works in the flesh, so to speak, in just a few weeks’ time. It’s all part of the scholarship awarded in the name of another Australian artist who was, incidentally, the same age as Phillips is now when the Tate Gallery purchased on of his paintings.
Whiteley, who died in 1992, was also just 20 when he was awarded the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship, and his experiences in Europe had a profound effect on him and his work, so much so that his mother, Beryl Whiteley, created an endowment for other young artists to have a similar experience.
The scholarship, administered by the Art Gallery of NSW, consists of $25,000 and a three-month residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.
“It’s designed for an emerging, beginning painter early in their career to go to Europe and have this big sort of European painting experience and to see all the work,” says Phillips.
“I guess Beryl Whiteley recognised that this was such a formative experience for a young painter, and that’s the point, it’s supposed to be this really formative, educational experience for people who are early in their painting career.”
He’s excited, to say the least. But, in keeping with his strong streak of reality, he’s not sold on the idea of Paris - or indeed anywhere - being the apex of an artist’s experience.
“I kind of like the idea of art not having a centre,” he says.
“I went on exchange to the United States [while at art school] and when you go to a place like New York and there are a million galleries everywhere, that’s where all the artists go. It’s weird, because New York is really only one experience, so all these artists are making work informed by New York City and at the same time these are supposedly the most important artists, so why are they all doing the same thing?”
That said, he doesn’t plan on staying in Canberra for much longer, although he’s unsure of what the future holds.
“I can’t really say, because I’m not a rich artist. I’m going to Europe for six months and then I’ll come back and I will most likely move to Sydney because I think that’s just where I would like to be. The goal is to look for a Sydney gallery,” he says.
“The thing is, I think that being from Canberra and studying in Canberra and working in Canberra the year after I graduated has been really good for me, it has helped me get a lot of traction … We have lots of really great artists here, and it is just a really great place to be focused on your work.”
He says that particularly in the year after graduating, there has been no better place to just put his head down and work hard.
“There's not a lot of distractions, but at the same time you realise that art is not about a shallow scene - it’s about work,” he says.
“That’s been really great for me because it’s kept me so focused. Especially graduating art school, I was just like, I cannot stop painting and fall into a void, so I applied for the Brett Whiteley and I got it.”
It’s disorienting, to say the least, to be talking money and plans with a talented young artist on the very brink of the rest of his life. But, putting aside all evocations of the very hedonistic Whiteley, Phillips just can’t help worrying about money.
“I’m not really someone who can go on a big adventure and be like, ‘I’ll go where the river takes me’. I do need a bit of a plan because I feel like I’m a bit too economically conservative, I always worry about money,” he says.
“My concern at the moment is just I really do want to keep making work, and my big fear is getting to a point where I can’t and I have to pack it in and make money.”
For the moment, though, Paris and Italy are calling and, if his early works are anything to go by, Phillips need not worry. He is, after all, only 23.