Philip Geiger Favorite Words Oil on canvas 24 X 32 inches 2006
Phillip Geiger is a noted painterly realist often painting figures in interiors. Philip Geiger received his MFA from Yale University in 1980 and shows at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in NYC. He has exhibited widely and has been the recipient of numerous art grants and awards. His paintings are represented in several prominent public collections and have been reviewed by the New York Times, Art in America, ARTnews, and The New Criterion. You can read a Maureen Mullarkey review here. In a 2007 ArtCritical.com review by Morgan Taylor says: “Philip Geiger described his attitude towards making paintings: “Intuitive seems to be the right word. I stop thinking… and try to let intensity carry the painting”
Philip Geiger Seven Thirty a.m. Oil on board 18 X 24 inches 2007
Geiger’s intensity of vision perhaps make the painting less self conscious and more about becoming genuinely engaged with his motif and resulting in great painting free of affectation. Fairfield Porter and Vuillard are some great painters that are clearly an inspiration but he moves out into his own territory that seems both of our time and that time doesn’t really matter. His figures often provide focus but don’t detract attention from the painting’s formal arrangement of light and color. His people are more like to a centrally placed and lovingly painted still life members. He arranges his stage from own home with hired models.
Alignment Oil on board 18 X 24 inches 2007
The figures suggest the sort of narrative conjured up in a day dream – perhaps musing over some family drama but really allowing yourself to fall into a meditative state where you take in the total visual scene at once and not one item in particular. The more engaging drama is in how Geiger organizes paint on the canvas rectangle, the poetry of simple items arranged in sparse rooms – and communicating to each other through tone, shape and color. The biggest star of all in these dramas is the unifying light which sets the key for everything to fall into and keep their place. These paintings make me want to be adopted into this family, where the love of life and beauty invite you to linger with no responsibility but to space out and enjoy the view.
Two Doors Oil on board 48 X 60 inches 2007
Different Shirt Oil on board 24 X 18 inches 2006
Hill City Oil on board 24 X 18 inches
Painting Perceptions was started in 2009 by Larry Groff to promote the ideas, practice and experience of painters working from observation in a modernist vein from around the world through interviews, essays, videos and community. It later evolved to include imagination-based and abstract painting as well.
How could anyone have anything but good things to say about Geiger’s work? It’s all there – refined, tasteful upper-middle class settings that a Cheever or O’Hara character would feel at home in, lush paint, interesting compositions, just the right level of not uncomfortable ambiguity. It’s the sort of painting that invites us to turn off the news to listen to Dvorak.
Phil’s painting strike a distinctive chord as painterly representations of an immediate experience, as it is right there before his eyes. Unlike Duchamp whose goal was to do away with the role of perception in art, Phil’s motive is to give free reign to his sensuous experience, and get that down with his brush full of color to reveal the authentic experience of the feeling for the place and time. I believe his works will stand the test of time beyond our own, and be among those we look at and admire in decades to come.
Thanks for your great comment Bill. Now that he’s been dead a few years, maybe “Duchamp” can finally start to loosen his grip on what can be called art! So that “painterly representation of an immediate experience” can be just as much of a valid artform as found urinals…
Philip Geiger’s paintings are remarkable. Beautiful light and color, not afraid to elevate the ordinary. This entire website is a great find!
I like how he combines the figure, interiors, and still life subjects in one interesting painting.
i like the shiny floor one with the red girl
Phil’s carved out an enviable niche for himself. In doing so, however, he has given us a quietly luminous – though palpably living – vision of a world whose boundaries, as a field for painterly exploration, are fairly infinite. I first saw his work nearly twenty-five years ago and it is as fresh and intriguing today as it was then. His talent seemed to have sprung full-blown – though it has enlarged its considerable range with every painting.
When thinking about his friend, John Singer Sargent, Henry James said something rather similar – though I’m too lazy to go looking for it.
Great artist, great teacher, great husband & dad! I love you, bro!
Years ago I almost bought a painting of his, “The Reader,” but it was sold by the time I got up my nerve. It captured a moment in amber, and I dream of it still. Elevating the ordinary is right, but his work also illuminates the value of the ordinary both with light and perspective.