Andrew Phillips - Artist & Therapist

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Andrew Phillips - Artist & Therapist

Visual Artist, Art Psychotherapist (HCPC), and Creative Mentor. My art explores landscape and the Numinous, and is available from my website.

I offer depth-oriented psychotherapy sessions online in the UK. Also Creative Mentoring Mentoring online.

01/03/2026

Studio update: 1.3

27/02/2026

On the shoulder of Sugar Loaf.

26/02/2026

Having the 'whole dream'. I appreciate what Segal says about imagination in the following passage...

"Day-dreams, understandably, have a bad press in psychoanalysis. And yet they are not far from something highly valued, that is, imagination. Day-dreams can be the beginning of story-telling....When Proust's Elstir, the painter, says, "If a little dreaming is dangerous the cure for it is not less dreaming but more dreaming, the whole dream", he speaks not of night dreams but of day-dreams....I like to think that Elstir's 'more dreaming', 'the whole dream', refers to the move from day-dreaming to imagination. The whole dream, to my mind, means less splitting, more integration, and reaching deeper layers of the mind.

Freud has said that the artist's fantasy must loose its egocentric character to become compatible with art. 'Losing the egocentric character', I think involves a modification of the pleasure principle. It necessitates integrating ones perceptions of external reality that includes others and the perception of one's own relation to them. It also includes perceptions of the relation between them.

In other words, imagination, unlike the typical day-dream, necessitates some abandonment of omnipotence and some facing of the depressive position. This makes imagination richer and more complex than a wish-fulfilling day-dream. The deeper layers of the mind which can thus be mobilized, the richer, denser, and more flexible is imagination."

— Hanna Segal, Dream, Phantasy and Art
Chapter 8 - Imagination, play and art

22/02/2026

Studio update: 22.02.26

19/02/2026

Forgotten Coast

Acrylic ink, iron gall ink, pastel, graphite, on Fabriano paper

Paper size: 56.5 x 29.5 cm
Image size: 52.5 x 25.5 cm
2026
£290 (Inc p&p to UK)
Available from my website

There is something about coasts and memory. Perhaps it is the ever shifting surface and sounds of the water which lends itself so well to describing the ungraspable nature of human experience. When we reach a shoreline we stop, or proceed very little further into the element, even though it is so familiar, our bodies being mostly composed of it. A forgotten coast could be a distant recollection of our true home, just beyond the unknown sea.

The pastel is applied by first crumbling it onto the paper in small amounts, and then smoothing it across the surface by hand. The mountain area is made using a dip pen with a fine nib, or mechanical pencil.

15/02/2026

Studio update: 15.02.26

14/02/2026

Stephen Jenkinson is a man of profound eloquence, and he brings his gift for language to the most poignant of experiences within a "death phobic" (dominant western) culture. Dying, death, bearing witness, wonder, heartfelt participation, home, are all granted a deeply moving treatment. Yet somehow, balanced with humour and wit in abundance.

I attended a day (I'm not sure what to call it, he loathed the term 'workshop') with him in Newport over ten years ago, and it was like nothing I have experienced before or since. And still, it is challenging to try and describe exactly what Stephen is, or does. He would have a beautiful way to express it, but I will rely on the words of Martin Shaw to get us nearer to the essence of this book...

"So in some deep and barely mentionable way, this work is a message back from the land of the dead concerning our ability to steward that very journey; about the hundred thousand times we betray imagination for fantasy, about who we are and where we might be headed. What follows is a Hawk across the Water carrying news of the Otherworld." - Martin Shaw

You will find plenty of conversations online, and the film Griefwalker would also be a good place to begin. I suggest that to hear Stephen speaking will only serve to enliven any of his writing you engage with.

Orphan Wisdom

13/02/2026

Our Imagined Past

Mountains move us into the physical spaces of deep time, and internally deliver us to a sense of shared ancestral memory.

Acrylic ink, iron gall ink, pastel, graphite, on Fabriano paper
Paper size: 29.5 x 17.5 cm
Image size: 25.5 x 13.5 cm
£150 - inclusive of shipping to UK addresses

Available from my website shop.

The pastel is applied by first crumbling it onto the paper in small amounts, and then smoothing it across the surface by hand. The mountain areas are made using a dip pen with fine nib, or mechanical pencil.

11/02/2026

Two books that have shaped my clinical thinking in profound ways are D.W. Winnicott’s Playing and Reality and Richard Frankel’s The Adolescent Psyche. Though written in different contexts, both works invite us to reconsider how we understand psychological growth, creativity, and transformation.

See the link in comments to read the blog post.

10/02/2026

Recent rambles through a waterlogged South country.

03/02/2026

Details of the first new images to emerge from the studio this year can be found in my latest newsletter (link is in the comments). They are all available to purchase from my website.

1. The Silent Knowing
2. By Your Own Light
3. Forgotten Coast
4. Our Imagined Past

Also.... Delighted to see the fantastic new body of work by Rowan Paton in her exhibition at The Scottish Gallery which opens this week. A must see.

To receive future editions by email you can visit my website and the sign-up form will appear.

02/02/2026

Final few days of the Society of Scottish Artists exhibition at Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in Edinburgh.

I haven't been able to make it to Scotland to visit the exhibition myself, but it looks like a great show, and I'm delighted to see my picture is in quality company. Looks like this one has found a new home too.

And This Heavy Silence
Ink, graphite, pastel on paper
Image size: 73 x 50 cm
2024
Framed by Detail Framing & Gallery
Exhibition Dates: Until Wednesday 4 February 2026

Opening Hours: Monday–Sunday, 10am–5pm

Venue: RSA Upper Galleries, Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL

Tickets: £5 entry | £4 concession | Free for under 16s and SSA Members | Free entry for all on Mondays.

Address

Newport

Website

http://www.AndrewVPhillips.co.uk/

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