Phillip Alder

Winter Slate: Contemporary Abstract Oil Painting

2016

Phil Alder for WCA. ‘The beautiful summertime paintings of Phil Alder.’ We are pleased to sell the ‘garden’ and ‘cascade’ paintings on behalf of Phillip Alder. Born in 1951 he studied at Hull College (now University of Lincoln) and Open University. Phil then followed a long career in the arts as curator, lecturer and gallery and theatres manager while maintaining a career as a practicing artist in west Wales. His work is represented in several private, public and corporate collections. We are also able to offer some paintings in good condition from his mid-career period when he was concentrating on form and colour and the stories behind a landscape. Art historian of Welsh art Ann Dorsett wrote in an exhibition catalogue of his work in 2020: ‘Phil Alder’s vivid paintings are a distillation of his response to the colour and form of the natural world. Standing before one of his [later] works allows you to immerse yourself in Phil’s world....gives a sense of riotous places filled with blossom, leaves branches, light and water... [he] is a superb colourist capturing the vibrant colours of midsummer in nature.... His oil paintings are characterised by a dense pattern of complex shapes and brushstrokes along with the most subtle touches of colour....also an accomplished and acute watercolour painter....not easy to categorise but I suppose I would call Phil Alder an expressionist painter but a really jolly one.’