last artrite of 2006...
the celebration just after christmas of 40 years work on
A Humument.
made a humument fragment using the final autumn leaves in talfourd road
a wedding of an old project with a new
and thereby another epithalamium for fiona who now owns it

unlike shane warne i have not retired
and am glad to take the field again this new year .
currently my batting average is 1 run as is my aggregate and highest score
made at the oval in the cricket match to celebrate my fiftieth birthday.
i may reach seventy this season [years not runs] if we get to empire day
[whats that mum?] . i cunningly chose to be born on may 24th since empire day was a half holiday from school...

The final fall out from princeton activity; laboured over in perivale at brad faine’s new workshop behind the hoover building. two editions of prints celebrate the leaves on einstein drive. the smaller seen here is exclusive to the institute for advanced study. a larger version (though in a smaller edition of 25) unites princeton, peckham (where some last minute substitute leaves were hoovered up and shoehorned in) and perivale itself.

what I had initially planned to do at the institute was to make some first steps towards the next version of a humument. i completed a few new pages before my study was submerged in dying foliage. as is usual on princeton visits old plans were abandoned in favour of new projects but here is one of the revisions. another will appear in the next issue of Art In America and all of them will be on show in the keiller library at the scottish national gallery of modern art from 6th october 2007 to 6th january 2008.

also I had the solicited pleasure of drawing freeman dyson, pioneer physicist and lucidest of writers on science and its moralities, one of my heroes. In this woven world connections must come to light. It turns out that freeman’s father was the eminent sir george dyson familiar to all church choristers, among whom I had often sung Dyson in G one of the evergreens of the Anglican litany. when I mentioned that my wife is working on the theme of salome we fell to talking about richard strauss. freeman remembers his coming to tea just after the war.

Is there a special ring yet to the name bellenden road?
street of strange bollards ornate mosaics and lampposts de luxe.
here for instance one late afternoon leaning against one of said bollards [by antony gormley]
looking over at one of said mosaics [by tp]
under the light of one of said lampposts [also by tp]
i am outside peckhams brilliant bookshop called review
having just bought a copy of jake tilsons 12 kitchens another low priced and lavish work from the local master of food and font
together with his little guide to peckham eating which strangely omits another of the glories of bellenden road
the friendliest and best of peckham eateries
the crossroads cafe where i most often have my lunch .
just the place to go tuesday to sunday after buying one of jakes [or
one of my] books.

A new drawing by TP goes on display from today at Tate Britain as part of a collaborative project and exhibition jointly organised by Tate Britain and the University of the Arts London. TP is one of 30 contemporary artists who over the last two years were invited to draw directly from a Turner drawing in the Prints and Drawings Room at Tate Britain and these drawings are displayed with the original Turners from which the artists worked.

Drawing From Turner
6th November - 22nd April 2007 NOW EXTENDED UNTIL 20th MAY 2007
Tate Britain, open daily until 5pm (except 24-26 December)

for more information, go to this page on the Tate's website.

We Work In The Dark (after Henry James)
pastel 2006
57 x 77cm

New works at Flowers Central, 21 Cork St, London W1S 3LZ

TP was at the Rainbow Room Gala for the American Associates of the Royal Academy Trust on October 24th in New York.

i managed to have a smoke hiding behind a fern in the rainbow room. 65 floors is a long way to go. my dodgy knee was sufficient alibi to avoid dancing and i confess to putting on a bit of a limp. that and the smoke were the highlights of the evening. otherwise very good trip to new york . lunch with tarik followed by a visit to my favourite comic store the time machine w14th at 7th where roger remembered my penchant for rima the jungle godess. i wish i could draw like hector redondo, came away laden back to chelsea hotel
strolling into the malibu diner nearby where i always have breakfast was hailed by old friend gavin henderson an habitue of both the malibu and the chelsea and therefore a person of rough refinement. like david gothard whom i bumped into in small world cafe in princeton last week he is a man of schemes and you become part of his latest after a few minutes. one of the guardians of le gai saber. he paid for breakfast so i worked out that it cost him $743 less to sit with me than it did my companion of the night before.
night porter

wet and windy today at the institute for advanced study. my studies advance to the extent of trying to make an organic sudoku [doubly fashionable] from the leaves which red and yellow are chasing each other across the wide lawns
3:44 AM

cezanne said he was doing poussin again after nature...perhaps this is an attempt to do the same with mondrian who as mondriaan started with trees anyway

Word Cross, wire 1987

One of the strange aspects of an artist’s job is that most of the time you are doing something no one has asked you to do; things that, since they do not as yet exist, no one could ask you to do. Sometimes they may of course be things that no one will ever require you to have done. It is a chancy life of uncontingent imperatives.

I first exhibited this Word Cross at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1997. Caroline Gould, a parishioner of Farningham, a small village in Kent, showed a great interest in securing it for her church, even though it is an expensive and doctrinally controversial object. I can only too readily imagine what efforts of planning and persuasion led, after many months of discussion, to its eventual acquisition this year. There was just time for me to have it shipped back from New York where it had been on show, and delivered to Farningham church on the Thursday of Easter Week. Luckily the installation (at a spot we had worked out together with the help of paper models) could be effected in the few hours before the appropriate Good Friday service for its dedication. The picture shows that it will soon look as if, simultaneously modern and mediaeval, it has always been there.  At a time when the artworld has become a bloated thing like a celebrity based branch of the stock exchange, it is very satisfying to make a real and seriously thoughtful transaction.

They also serve that only stand and wait...

Word Cross at St Peter & St Paul, Farningham 2011

TP is currently a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton where he will be in residence until 10th November, during his stay he can be contacted through his website www.tomphillips.co.uk.