Phillip Frye
Region: West
City / State: Plano, TX
Raised in a religious context, I make intimate paintings that pace through the cyclical, inner dialogue of spiritual ceremonies that lodge themselves in the impressionable “other.” These processionary figures demonstrate a practiced decorum of spirituality while navigating the continuous doubt, death, and regrowth of seeking acceptance and detachment from God and His flock. A facade of reverence coats the solemn figures––stoic in their repetitive sessions as they seek to reap wilted answers from their sown questions: Why does the prodigal son return? Why does the sheep forgive the wolf? Why did God create the apple tree? My artwork plants itself firmly in the gray.
Drawing inspiration from Charlotte Salomon and illuminated manuscripts, my works are surreal diaries of self-questioning and personal experiences captured as pages from an exhumed past with veneration and trepidation of my waning religion and my waxing queerness.