Painting Performance

Performance Statement
I was born in London’s East End and trained across the UK and the USA, studying at East Ham College of Technology, Loughborough College of Art and Design, and Virginia Commonwealth University. I completed my MA in Printmaking at the University of Brighton in the late 1980s, where I am now Course Leader of BA Fine Art Printmaking. I also teach at West Dean College.
Throughout my practice I have worked in series, producing multiple iterations of the same subject. A constant thread running through the work is the figure. Having appeared twice on Sky Portrait Artist of the Year, I am acutely aware of the pressures and limitations of working directly from life within a constrained time frame. That experience has intensified a sustained preoccupation with portraiture, and in particular with questions of likeness, time, and decision making.
The premise of this performance is to work on three portraits simultaneously. Ideas, decisions, and problems circulate between the three paintings, allowing challenges specific to that moment to be explored in parallel. By working across multiple canvases at once, each portrait informs the others, creating a dynamic dialogue that encourages immediacy, risk, and reflection within the act of painting itself.

Artist Biography
Phil Tyler trained in Fine Art at Loughborough College of Art and Design and Virginia Commonwealth University, USA, and completed an MA in Printmaking at the University of Brighton in 1990. He is currently Course Leader of BA Fine Art Printmaking at Brighton and also teaches at West Dean College.
He has exhibited widely, including at the New English Art Club, ING Discerning Eye, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Lynn Painter Stainers Prize, Garrick/Milne Prize, Royal Overseas League, EAST, The National Open, and Whitworth Young Contemporaries. His work is held in public and private collections in the UK and internationally, including Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, Peterborough Museum, University of Essex Modern and Contemporary British Art Collection, Yale Center for British Art, and the Priseman Seabrook Collection, as well as collections in the USA, Australia, Finland, Hong Kong, and Sweden.
He has written three books for The Crowood Press: Drawing and Painting the Nude (2015), Drawing and Painting the Landscape (2017), and Procreate Landscape Painting on the iPad (2025). He is currently working on a book on contemporary portraiture.