John Ransom Phillips’ approach to painting is not easily categorized, which is something he prefers, having always sought to create his own path. Occupying both figurative and abstract dimensions, Phillips’ work draws the viewer close, with its vivid colors and complex spaces, and then slowly reveals its many meanings.
“What is real to me,” says Phillips, “is what is concrete and immediate. My consciousness reveals images and patterns of behavior; my memories and dreams provide me with maps of my unconsciousness. They reveal that I have lived many times before this life, and will do so again. ‘What I assume, you shall assume’ becomes the ground for going forth.” Phillips’ work, if studied chronologically, reveals the various stages in discovering oneself by way of ‘ransoming’ an old identity, as he puts it, in order to move on to a new one.
Jonathan Goodman, contributing editor at ArtCritical has said: “[Phillips’] sense of appropriation is powerfully imaginative—the artist aims to reenact the existence of someone from another life—much as Cindy Sherman does in her famous film stills… The relationship between author and mediator is deliberately complex, so that it is hard to say whether it is Phillips himself or his assumed persona that is the subject of the works before us.”