Anita Phillips

Anita Phillips is a visual artist with an appreciation and respect for the landscape.   Plein air painting has become an increasingly important part of her process, with work produced in the landscape forming both inspiration for larger studio works and finished pieces in themselves.  

Anita is inspired to capture a feeling of calmness and contemplation in the depictions of landscapes and still life portrayed by her art.  Raised on a farm in the Wheatbelt of WA, many of her works are grounded in her love of the vast skies, horizon and weather of the landscape.  The study of distant horizons is an ongoing theme informing Anita’s process.  She is drawn to the depiction of harsh and remote places, and seeks to travel to and paint these wild landscapes.   

A series of art residencies over five months in the UK in 2019 with WASPS (Scotland/Shetland) and the Brisons Veor  Trust (Cape Cornwall), were instrumental in the development of her artistic practice and plein air work.  

In 2021, Anita travelled with fellow artists to the Pilbara, which is the inspiration of this current series of work.   Working alongside fellow artist Carly Le Cerf, they spent long hours in the landscape painting and drawing the landscape each day, camping approximately 130km to the West of Paraburdoo.  Anita became increasingly drawn to the twisted trunks of the Pilbara gums and bloodwood trees – their contorted shapes formed ever so slowly by the harsh conditions and light.   Anita aimed to capture the long shadows and changing hues of the light moving over these hills, deep valleys and rocky outcrops.  In painting these works back in the studio, she also wanted to keep the responsive nature of the plein air work and to just include the key aspects of the landscape – the sense of distance and scale, the intensity of the colour at that time of day and those beautiful twisted trees as they descend the hillsides…