William Phillips was born in 1945. “In my aviation works, I hope to convey to the viewer the beauty and exhilaration of flight.” Phillips’ words speak of a goal which he renews with each aviation painting. Indeed, Phillips’ paintings often pull the viewer into the action by his technique of blurring the foreground. As the landscape rushes by, the viewer feels the exhilaration of which Phillips talks. Phillips’ work hangs in numerous public and private collections throughout the world. He’s logged hours in F-106’s, F-15’s, and RF-4’s, and spent a tour of duty in the Air Force which included an assignment at Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam. Phillips claims a hereditary calling to art. His father was a fine painter and cartoonist, but chose the theater as his career. As for Bill, he has had a love affair with flight from the days when he was 12 and would spend his afternoons watching Air National Guard F-86’s take off and land at the Van Nuys (California) Airport. Never believing he could make a career of art, however, Phillips chose to major criminology in college and had been accepted into law school. One afternoon he hung four of his paintings in an airport restaurant; before the third was up he had sold them all. That was all it took to convince him that his future lay not in legal practice but as a fine art painter. Phillips is now the aviation artist of choice for many American heroes and the nostalgic landscape artist of choice for many collectors. After one of his paintings was presented to King Hussein of Jordan, Phillips was commissioned by the Royal Jordanian Air Force. He developed 16 major paintings, many of which now hang in the Royal Jordanian Air Force Museum in Amman. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum presented a one-man show of Phillips’ work in 1986; he is one of only a few artists to have been so honored. In 1988, Phillips was chosen to be a U.S. Navy combat artist. For his outstanding work, the artist was awarded the Navy’s Meritorious Public Service Award and the Air Force Sergeants Association’s Americanism Medal. In 1991, three of Phillips’ works were chosen as part of the top 100 in Art for the Parks, the prestigious annual fund-raiser for the National Park Service, and one painting received the Art History Award from the National Park Foundation.
