Seventy fifth birthday looming up and a small self fest to celebrate. 

Will be doing a reading from A Humument at Review Bookshop on 30th May. (The new and updated 5th edition will be published by Thames & Hudson on 24th).

24th May (the birthday itself) is varnishing day at the RA where I’ll be showing tennis balls and 5 new prints in the Summer Exhibition. 

25th May going local again with a substantial exhibition namely of prints at GX Gallery.

On 26th a show of new work will open at Flowers East. 

For the latter I seem to be in the middle of a group of a dozen or so pastels. Pastels again, yes.

Somehow I find myself in tune with paper and charcoal and chalk and pastel and especially with the rubbing out of same, working backwards, erasing away, letting the paper do the white work… more like finding a sculpture inside a messy bit of wood; subtracting, getting rid of, carving back.

How it Ended Up, Pastel, 2012, h61cm x w46cm

Also on birthday number 75, an update to A Humument App for iPad and iPhone comes out on iTunes, and a brand new, redesigned Tom Phillips website will be launched (more about that soon). In the following week I shall be on the road again for the fortieth sampling of 20 Sites n Years.

Blog readers are invited to the private view of my show at GX Gallery, Camberwell on the 25th May, and the opening at Flowers East on the 26th May. I hope to bump into all three of you at one or the other of these events.