Once More With Feeling

Of all the artists in Sheuat's stable, however, there's one who just cries out for more attention. For the past few years now I've run across the work of Alfred Phillips, who quietly walks away with awards from group shows all over Broward County, including a Best in Show from the aforementioned Starving Artist Competition, and yet never seems to get the follow-up I think he deserves.

The first work at Art Expressions that reminded me how wonderful Phillips can be is a big acrylic called A Smattering of Flora. The simple title is both disingenuous and appropriate — the painting is literally a close-up of subtropical foliage that approaches abstraction with its glorious fixation on patterns and colors and textures.

Two smaller Phillips canvases nearby, Crack of Dawn and Everglades at Evening Time, aren't as strong, despite their inventive matting and framing, nor is the artist's more realistic Surfing Boat. But there's another batch of small works by Phillips back in that narrow rear corridor that indicate that he's nothing if not prolific and ambitious. His range of styles and techniques is wildly extensive, and despite some pieces that just don't quite make it, there are others that have a spontaneous feel that suggests a restless artistic temperament worth encouraging. Won't somebody give this amazing guy a one-man show?