Surf's Up

Watercolor Collage

28" x 24" 

Phil LaBorie

Garden City, SC

A graduate of the University of Rochester (BA - English) and the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA - Painting), Phil LaBorie has had work appear in several one-man and group shows in the US and Canada including: 

Phil LaBorie is also the 2015 recipient of the Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship from the Emrys Foundation in SC and serves as a volunteer in the KidsArt Program at the Franklin G. Burroughs - Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach. 

Artist Statement:

"I was born just after WWII began, so my earliest memories are of drawn blackout shades, hooded car headlights, air raid wardens and warning drills, ration stamps and a general fear of determined Nazis (always in uniform) sneaking up on our house in Rochester, new York.  Elements from those long ago memories still find their way into my current work.

As our world rushes forward into the future with ever-increasing fury, I think its important that we pause occasionally not only to remind each other of our history as a species, and what lessons we may have learned during our time together, but with conscious determination and a little luck, use what we've discovered as channel markers to guide the course we're taking into the future, or at least where we think we'd like to go. 

With that in mind, I'm always on the lookout for reminders of our past.  Whether they emerge form the ground as pieces of pottery, old bottles, and rusted farm equipment or scraps from metal and wooden signs, cancelled stamps, old coins or bottle tops; they all have played a part in creating our culture and are totems of our history. 

The trick is to assemble these reminders in a way where the sum of the parts creates a visually stimulating and unexpected whole.  Works that not only remind us of the past, but perhaps help us to forget a reasonably optimistic future."