About Mal Phillips
Biography
My paintings have had a major influence in my life over the past sixty years. Someone once asked me do you have to paint. I thought, what a funny question. My answer was yes of course. Since then I have found that art goes back for generation in my family. My children are also artists. A painting of Oystermouth Castle was the inspiration for the 10 day Ostreme Pageant and festival which raised more than £100,000. ‘The Bells of Santiago.’ was a remarkable story of the Copperopolis at Swansea. This led me to produce a collection of fifty paintings, now held in Swansea library. These depict the proud history of Swansea's shipping and copper barques. Many of my paintings are still seascapes. Early works were in oil, then the majority of my work was acrylic but nowadays its watercolour. Being largely self-taught my career was with BP which took me all around the world. I was flown urgently offshore to bring the first well on stream in the North Sea's Forties field. I take my sketch books everywhere I go. I am still working presenting courses in Middle East on Emergency Response. I have studies of every oil and gas field in Abu Dhabi and neighbouring countries, I love the peace and tranquillity of the desert. I have developed a rapid method of sketching which observers find extraordinary as it captures the essence of a landscape within a minute. Recently I have learnt to animate the exercises for my course which I will put on my website. This is an amazing new form of Art. It is straightforward to capture any landscape, turn it into 3D light it in any way you like add moving characters with actions and facial expressions as well as creative animals and give them a voice to tell the story. These can be displayed in a virtual world through a headset or iphone. Surely this will be the art of the future. Harry Potters animated paintings will be for everyone with an I phone. My new studio in Lymington is now complete, learning to animate has slowed down my painting production but I am now ready to get to it. There are a host of marine subjects in and around Lymington and the Solent. I am particularly inspired by the work of Joseph Zbukvic an amazing watercolour artist.
