Phillip Allen

Phillip Allen, a celebrated artist, fearlessly explores the boundless possibilities of painting and has earned critical acclaim as "one of the great painters of his generation."

Biography of Phillip Allen

Phillip Allen was born in 1967 in London, UK. From 1987 to 1990, he studied at Kingston University in London, earning a BA degree. Later, he continued his education and, in 1992, received an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in London. 

Throughout Allen's artistic career, his work has been exhibited numerous times in solo and group exhibitions. Some of the standout solo shows include Phillip Allen: Recent Paintings, MoMA PS1, New York, NY, USA (2003); Paintings & Drawings, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium (2007); oxblood, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2013); Deepdrippings, The Approach, London, UK (2019); and Coarse Grain, The Approach, London, UK (2022), among others. 

Moreover, Phillip Allen's art was showcased in numerous group exhibitions, including Another Shitty Day in Paradise, Bart Wells Institute, London, UK (2002); GROUP SHOW Gallery Artists, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2005); Hope and Despair, Cell Project Space, London, UK (2007); A Sort of Night to the Mind a Kind of Night for Our Thoughts, Artary Galerie, Stuttgart, Germany (2011); 20 Years Show, The Approach, London, UK (2017); A RAW GARDEN, The Fitzrovia Gallery, London, UK (2019), and many more. 

Currently, Phillip Allen lives and works in London. 

Phillip Allen's Art Style

Phillip Allen is an intrepid experimenter who defies adherence to any specific mode or style. He relishes in constantly pushing the boundaries of his art, traversing from geometric semi-figurative landscapes to soft, disintegrated abstraction and then to highly sculptural and textured impasto chalkboard paintings.

Allen's paintings stand as a testament to his brilliance as a colorist. In his art, he skillfully reimagines pictorial space and depth while deeply exploring the materiality of paint - its plasticity, texture, and sculptural qualities. Even though his artistic practice is rooted in these very physical formalistic problems, the resulting paintings can seem unearthly, cosmic - as if freed from that very materiality.

Allen's artworks are associative, occasionally playful, and even hallucinatory, with their titles revealing the artist's keen sense of humor and unending curiosity.