Connor Phillips

Connor Phillips (b. 2001) is an oil painter who explores the subjects of queerness, intimacy and the body while playing with paint’s ability to transfigure. A fascination with embodiment and the experience of flesh permeates through the work via figuration and in some focused moments that speak to a particular lived experience, often ones of intimacy. A dissection of vulnerability as an artist is a continuing exploration within his practice, questioning how much work’s meaning can usefully lie in the subconscious. To compose the works, video plays an important role, and the artefacts of this process sometimes become part of the final work. 

For his final collection, Connor has explored the act of the bite to articulate a multifaceted conceptualisation of intimacy that has been the centre of his research on the MFA programme. The bite is physical, emotional, mundane, fleshy, violent, intimate and metaphorical. 

Before joining the MFA programme, Connor completed an undergraduate in Architecture at the University of Cambridge and while there completed his most major work as of yet, a series of permanent murals at the historic Cambridge Union (2024).

Personal website.