Phil Saxon was born in 1960 in the working class stronghold of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His neighborhood was known more for its motorcycles and beer than its affinity for and support of the arts. Yet, as he grew up, an artist emerged; a unique and powerful expressionist—a painter.
Saxon took his raw talent and passion to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received his BFA. He later earned his MFA with honors from Northern Illinois University. His award-winning work has been widely collected and has been featured prominently in galleries, museums and churches throughout the United States.
His art is strongly influenced by the expressive qualities of the Post-Impressionists and early Modernists, especially Picasso, Matisse, Nolde, and Van Gogh. For many years he has attended numerous art museums and galleries. His passion for artwork and studying the lives of artists play a key role in the process of making a work of art. When creating a painting he begins by choosing an image from an art book or magazine. He treats the creative process as an exploration. Through the process of painting and repainting he discovers ‘the’ image that becomes his completed artwork. He uses ink, watercolor, thick and thin applications of paint, pasting techniques and more… often using surface texture to add to his works’ emotive quality. His technique delivers complex tones, colors and surfaces that provoke a direct response from the viewer.
Believing that we all experience a common range of emotions in life, he attempts to convey, in abstract terms, these universal experiences using paint, paper and canvas. An expert in loss and survival, Saxon‘s work reflects his commitment to passionately represent the power of recovery and spiritual rebirth. Though not overt, his work reflects his struggle with the scourge of drug and alcohol abuse, the blight of cancer and the desolation of a loved one’s suicide. In front of this tragic curtain lies his spiritual rebirth to Christianity and his treasured relationship with a loving wife and soul mate. All of this, the spiritual, the joy, the pain, the mundane, the anger, the extraordinary, the existential can be seen and experienced in his work.
© Phil Saxon