Daniel Phill's Colorful Botanical Images at the George Billis Gallery

Written by Henry Thompson Friday, 27 May 2011 19:42

Los Angeles, CA .- The George Billis Gallery is pleased to present "Flourish", an exhibition of Northern California based painter Daniel Phill's new work. The exhibition features recent paintings that employ an expressionist style to render botanical forms. The exhibition runs from May 21st to July 2nd with an artist reception on June 4th from 5-8pm.

Daniel Phill embraces the ambiguity between abstraction and figuration in his work. Plants, flowers and vegetation appear and vanish into the picture plane, often submerged under layers of pigment and washes. A fluid application of paint, using non-traditional painting tools, contributes to achieve results which are intensely colorful and often sensuous. In each painting, the artist's use of color dramatizes the illusion of space and light to produce an ambiance full of both energy and serenity. He seems to deconstruct the natural environment, to then reconstruct it - using an improvised painterly expressionism. Through gesture and perception, Phill creates work that is both organic and unrehearsed.

As the artist says "My current paintings explore improvised botanical imagery using abstract painterly processes. The works are a result of exploration and discovery. I believe the most complex emotions can be evoked from the simplest of forms, merging and emerging, interlocking and dividing. My vocabulary of color, shape, and texture are given form through movement. The gestures, marks and scribbles found throughout my paintings are remnants of a process and journey, rather than simply compositional elements on a two-dimensional surface. My paintings evolve over the course of many layers, obliterating and revealing past histories of thought and action.  These abstract paintings are interpretations of vegetation and flowers that often tend to suggest landscapes. My interest in depicting imagery through the lens of abstraction informs my process. The ambiguity created by composing and dissolving of form creates a tension between abstraction, figuration, and the illusion of space. Through pouring, dripping, scraping and smearing various viscosities of paint, I work to achieve images that are organic, spontaneous, and evolving. Raised levels of paint play an active role in defining form and establishing biomorphic shapes. Extended drips of and gestural paint - loaded brushstrokes help the paintings play between the boundaries of abstraction and representation."


Phill was born and raised in Washington State. He received his MFA from Stanford University. Daniel Phill has exhibited nationally and is in diverse public and private collections, such as: Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA; Tucson Museum of Art; Citigroup Inc; Clear Channel; Ernst & Young; First USA Bank; GTE; Nordstrom; Pfizer; SAP America; Sprint; Stanford University; and US Department of State. Phill's paintings have been reviewed or published in: ARTnews; Art in America; New York Sun; California Home+Design; New Yorker; Los Angeles Times; Art & Antiques; Who's Who in the West; and Artweek, among others. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.

After establishing a successful contemporary art gallery in New York, George Billis opened his Los Angeles gallery in 2004. With galleries in Chelsea and Culver City, George Billis Gallery provides a dynamic exchange of contemporary artists between the art centers of New York and Los Angeles. The gallery shows painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media works and is dedicated predominantly to exhibiting emerging to mid-career artists with a focus on Southern California artists. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.georgebillis.com

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