Biography
Jason E. McPhillips is a professional artist who currently maintains his studio in Boulder, CO. He specializes in drawing,
which informs both his painting and relief sculpture. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University as a film student from
1996-1999, making numerous short films, and screening his work at the local "Flicker" film festival. It was during this period
that McPhillips began to spend more and more time at the drafting table working on storyboards for his films. He began to
study perspective and artistic anatomy. He fell in with a circle of students who regularly attended drawing and sculpture
classes with Georgian sculptor "Batu" Siharulidze. Though continually inspired by film, McPhillips began to devote most of
his time to the traditional disciplines of drawing, painting and sculpture.
Jason's passion for drawing led him to continue his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
During the course of his studies he was awarded the Thomas Eakins Memorial Prize for Figure Painting, the Michael G. Cappuzzi
Memorial Endowment, and the coveted Lois and Charles X. Carlson Landscape Painting Residency. He has apprenticed under renowned
sculptor Anthony Visco and with painter/filmmaker Bo Bartlett.
After finishing his studies at the Academy, he worked briefly as a freelance illustrator, production artist and web designer.
In 2003, Jason left the commercial art world and hit the road, taking a five-month landscape painting expedition through the
United States. Painting daily, he traversed twenty-five states. Paintings, sketches, and journal excerpts from this series,
entitled Travelogue, have been exhibited in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Montana, and Colorado. His work hangs in many private
collections as well as the R.M. Shoemaker Corporation of Pennsylvania.
Presently McPhillips teaches figure drawing through the Boulder YMCA and Breakthrough Arts Program for teens. He seeks to
awaken wonder in his students, through the twin miracles of art and the human body.
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