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Jacqueline Morreau - November 2006
Philip Pank was born in 1933 in India, and lived there until he was seven, when he came to England and to boarding school. There he made friends with an
Ethiopian boy, Alex Desta, who, like Philip, was deeply interested in art, both preferring painting and drawing to rugby. Perhaps the vivid colours that were the background to their early years gave them an important common ground. Certainly Philip had a lifelong passion for colour.
Although Philip wanted to go on to Art College, his father thought he should choose a more practical career. After weighing up the various possibilities, Philip decided that architecture would be a profession that would offer some of the same challenges and stimuli that excited him in the visual arts. Many an artist has made the same choice - much to the benefit of the profession.
He was offered two scholarships, one to Cambridge and one to the Architectural Association in London. He chose the Architectural Association, which gave him access to the galleries and libraries of London, as well as its museums and the metropolitan life. Being in London allowed him to take advantage of St Martin's School of Art, which encouraged artists to use their facilities in the evenings, and the Royal Academy, which opened its life drawing room at the week-ends. Philip extended the hours of his week to follow both his architectural studies and his development as an artist.
This was typical of the Philip I knew - to fill his days to the top. He continued to draw at St Martin's until three weeks before his untimely death in July 1991.
In his drawings and paintings, Philip did not follow the fashion of the time by trying to develop a "style", but was informed by the rich world he saw around him. It is true that one can always recognise a Pank work of art, but not because he used stylistic tricks or over-simplifications. He was a maximalist, actually - his work is full of energy - rich and varied. His work had a sculptural underpinning; he was always searching to reveal how things are made and yet to show the components of colour and sparkle. He loved to work from the model; his animated nudes are some of his best work, but even in drawing a flower or a butterfly, he excites the viewer.
His greatest talent was as a colourist. Colour was the expression of his enthusiasm about life and how life and living are expressed in the natural world, through all its manifestations from a blade of grass to a beautiful nude.
Many of the friends he made over the years were sculptors. He admired the work of Phillip King, Eduardo Paolozzi and Anthony Caro, but he also studied and enjoyed the great draughtsmen of the past, from Rembrandt to Picasso; and artefacts, from Persian rugs to Mayan pots. And he was a great collector - prints, drawings, rugs - all reflecting his appetite for colour and form.
Philip was a large man and his style was in his body. His size and energy can be seen in much of his work, especially his paintings with their big, vigorous brush strokes emphasising the characteristically bold use of colour. As he got older, his oil paintings came to be more tactile and layered, and took on a depth and colour seen in late Delacroix, or even Van Gogh. In smaller work, like etchings, he could be most delicate. The marks he made were definite and sure, rarely reworked whichever medium he was using.
The Pank family were great travellers. Philip always found new and exciting artefacts, views, colours of various times of day and new places His family have all inherited his enthusiasm and energy - even to the third generation. He was especially blessed in his enthusiastic and supportive wife, Trish, without whom none of this would be here for us all to see.
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with catalogue
For further information
email paul@millineryworks.co.uk
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Mylor Harbour, Cornwall Oil on canvas 1979
Mara Caberl Oil on canvas 1981
Nude 230 Water colour 1980
L'Etale Mountain, Megeve, France Oil on canvas 1977
Beach Ansedonia Water colour 1982
Lucia Oil on canvas 1988
Mylor Harbour, Cornwall Oil on canvas 1979
Annia Pastel 1986
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