Philip Meyer (1923 – 2014)

Philip Meyer, born in New York City and brought up in Brooklyn, lived in London from 1964.

Philip trained at New York’s renowned Cooper Union College of Art, the New School for Social Research, and Columbia University – all in Manhattan.

After several years as a highly successful graphic designer in leading New York advertising agencies, he came speculatively to London – and stayed, building up a specialist art studio, serving most of the capital’s leading agencies.

Throughout, however, he kept on painting – not with a view to exhibiting or selling, but for his own pleasure and satisfaction. Not until 1988 was he persuaded to put on his first one-man show in Highgate, London, and subsequently was asked to exhibit in various art shows around the country, not least in Suffolk, his favourite place of escape from the city. In 2004 and 2008 he had one-man shows in Chillesford and in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

His work is unusual in that he isn’t one for thematic obsessions; rather, he is constantly seeking something new. If any obsession exists, it is with experiment and exploration – where the excitement lies in what might develop next, and what one discovers in ‘controlled accidents’. Not that anyone hears him explaining what he does or why, preferring to let the art speak for itself.

Evidently it speaks well for large numbers of admirers, for his work is in many collections, not only in the UK and USA, but also in the West Indies, France, Greece and Spain.