Download a PDF of the exhibition catalogue - The Scottish Gallery

Together they worked in Boulder, Colorado for ten weeks in the summer of 1963and the paintings inspired by the primitive churches he saw in the border countyrenewed a favourite theme. By the end of the decade he tackled the Crucifixionagain, inspired by a visit to Grunewald’s Isenheim Alterpiece but was also in themidst of new subjects he titled Humankind and Threnody. In 1972, on his way toGreece, on a sabbatical from The College, he became ill and was operated onfor cancer in Boulogne. Though he was to live for another twenty years he wasin remission rather than free from illness. New themes appear such as WomenObserved and animalist subjects inspired by the zebras, baboons and lions hesaw on a trip to South Africa in 1975. In the eighties he divested himself of officialduties and his family arrived: he married Diana Pollock in 1976 and they adoptedtwo children before the arrival of their son Anthony in 1987. Themes of the sea,still life, studio interior and sumptuous poppy pictures dominate this last phaseand are painted with the same energy and technical mastery as the work of theseventies but violence has often been replaced with a sense of celebration.In 1989 he worked with Colin Thomson, previously Director at the NationalGalleries of Scotland on a huge retrospective which was mounted in the summerat the College of Art. Then in 1999 Philip Long curated a Philipson show forthe Gallery of Modern Art, the final of six reviews of the principal figures ofthe Edinburgh School. These exhibitions and the two we have mounted sincedemonstrate clearly that Philipson is an artist of international stature.