Philip J Brittan
Born in 1953 in Bristol. Lives and works in London.
Philip J Brittan's artistic practice is a fusion of traditional and contemporary techniques, characterized by a dynamic interplay between photography, painting, and printmaking. His work stands out for its vibrant, saturated colours and sensuous, stylized compositions. Brittan blurs boundaries by photographing paintings and digitally manipulating them and by painting over photographs and rephotographing them. He combines historic photographic processes (cyanotype, tintype, collodion negatives) with modern digital tools, creating a dialogue between past and present. Techniques like screen printing and print transfers are further altered through painting, copying, and digital reworking. Brittan’s process is deliberate and experimental, involving repeated layering and blending of mediums, moving back and forth between physical and digital realms and allowing each medium to inform and transform the other. Bookmaking is central to Brittan’s practice. He has produced both limited-edition artist books and commercially available works. Emphasizing the book as a medium for artistic expression Brittan’s artist books serve as archives of his evolving techniques, showcasing his mixed-media compositions.
Brittan’s work is a profound meditation on time, memory, and place, rendered through a deeply tactile, process-driven approach that is both lyrical and experimental, and in which the creative process itself becomes a central subject. Time is also used as a medium with the long duration of the many recursive processes involved shaping the work. With each series embodying a dialogue between environment, materiality and emotional resonance, Brittan’s work often features bold, vivid colours that persist across all series and bind the work together.
Created in his mother’s beautiful garden during the last months of her life, the Last Garden series is an intimate act of preservation and transformation, of memory, mortality and the mark of place. Brittan painted on chromogenic prints, buried them in the garden (some wrapped in household fabrics), and allowed time and nature to physically alter the work; the earth, moisture, and decay become collaborators, embedding the garden’s (and thereby his Mother’s) essence into the art. The buried works act as metaphors for loss and the passage of time while the garden’s imprint—both literal and emotional—becomes part of the art.
In the series MB1+MB2 and MB3+MB4 Brittan presents another deeply immersive and tactile approach to landscape with work inspired by the unique landscape of the Morecambe Bay area in the north west of England. Chromogenic prints are soaked in Morecambe Bay water, painted and rephotographed; cyanotypes created in Bay water are collaged and painted; paintings are photographed and treated digitally.
In The Time Between, Brittan creates images of nocturnal urban landscapes. Again the photographic medium in its sophisticated entirety is combined with painting and screen printing to convey the bewitching theatrical atmosphere of cities at night. The images recognise the city centre as a place of both beauty and degradation, a place of excitement and adventure but also alienation and loneliness.
Based on long walks Brittan made through the city and surrounding countryside of his home city of Bristol, Ghosts Are Real is about memory, time and place and the countless, often confusing ways in which they relate to each other; about the often elusive, fragmented nature of how we remember and experience places of personal significance. Encompassing diverse camera methods, experimental processing, a range of painting media and printmaking techniques, Ghosts Are Real is a glorious, multi-layered, full-bleed expression of beauty, colour and abstraction.
In the series Autumn River Brittan captures the ephemeral magic of nature in transition with images of decaying leaves that fall into the River Frome, in the south west of England, and are carried, like brightly coloured jewels, along its length each year. The work explores the unexpected ways in which light falls through the surface of the river and illuminates the stationary and travelling leaves, many of which have been worn thin and transparent. Leaves are reflected and distorted in a myriad of ways, perspective, scale and colour are reconfigured—a mass of intoxicating hues, intensified and blurred with movement; trees on the riverbank viewed through a multi-coloured haze. The colourful chaos that is autumn producing a canopy of glorious colour smeared by water and wind—a sensational natural firework display of the red, yellow and orange pigments of autumn leaves.
Philip J Brittan has had a varied career path, transitioning from academia to commercial photography and now to fine art; a trajectory that reflects a creative evolution—from analytical teaching to client-driven photography, and now to self-directed artistic exploration. Brittan began his career as a university lecturer in sociology, establishing a strong foundation in social theory and critical thinking. After leaving academia, he spent a decade and a half in London working as a professional photographer, serving diverse clients and mastering multiple genres. This commercial experience was important in developing his technical skills and refining his creative vision. Most recently, he has shifted focus to fine art, blending his sociological perspective and photographic expertise with new techniques and modes of expression.
Education:
BA University of Kent
MA University of Warwick
PhD University of Kent
Contact:
t: +44 (0) 7985642959
See also: PJB Editions