Phil Kendall is a 65 year old studio based artist. He lives with his wife [named online as The Memsahib] in the UK Cathedral City of Peterborough. He returned to painting regularly in 1996 and established The Art Studio of Meltemi, on his final retirement, in 2006 and this web site in 2008.


Phil Kendall, pictured on Santorini 2007.

Today his art is only available from this website. Art galleries continue to close meanwhile he carries on painting almost daily producing genuine hand painted works of art and a growing number of privately commissioned paintings.

He works only in acrylics, this is largely due to discovering them while at school in the late 1950's, the time when acrylics were first introduced to the world of the artist. He was instantly captured by them seeing them as the way forward for art and artists' in the bold new world.

His personally selected professional grade acrylic paints and inks are sourced from across the world. They enable Phil to deliver the bold, vibrant colours of his art-vision in a way that few other artists' materials can.

Traditional artists' mediums [oils & pastels] were tried and rejected on health reasons. The key factors with acrylics is that they are very clean to use, have a very low skin irritancy and they do not have any solvent fumes.

Unlike watercolours acrylics offer a long life of colour stability without any significant fading. Unlike oils the full depth of the acrylic paint is normally fully dried within 24 hours and does not crack or peel away from the canvas. Acrylics are just as technically demanding as both oils and watercolours.

His chosen surface for painting on is canvas. Simply nothing else feels as good as painting on canvas. Again along the way he has painted on just about every usual artists' support, they all have some merit.

Phil's paintings are an invitation for the viewer to take part in a subtle distillation of reality seeing the world through his eyes. Those eyes have the visual challenge of tunnel vision caused by Glaucoma. His art has become a subtle blend of both the classic representational art with some non-representational art thrown in. The result is a unique contemplative moment being transformed into a work of art using a strong sense both light and vivid colour.

His hand-painted works of art are more about something rather than paintings of something. Through his art he aspires to communicate the grace, the elegance & the lost beauty of his chosen memory of a place that he and his wife have explored. A painting does this in a way that no one photograph can ever do.

Phil's technique is described as direct painting placing one colour in one brush-stroke onto a pure white stretched canvas and then moving on to the next area of colour. This produces artworks with beautifully executed blocks of bold vibrant colours.

His instantly recognisable unique art-style has been described as art being cut down to its essence.

As a tourist there is just not enough time to make anything more than the most elementary sketch and they just don't work for him. Sitting out in the open painting, exposed to the elements and being visited by every passing art critic is just not his scene either. Painting from memories is simply abstract art.

The digital camera is so much quicker in capturing those details needed for making a painting. A series of photographs of any potential subject form a photo-montage which records all those necessary little details that produce a true work of art.

He could work just as easily from your photographs but only those that you own the copyright of. He cannot work from any commercial pictures, taken from say a magazine, without the consent of its publisher.

The Blog shares the process and choices made in the making of his art. From time to time his blog offers a reflection on a series of related paintings. You are invited to add your comments to his blog.

Phil Kendall would be delighted to hear from you by email to mail@meltemiart.com Your feedback & comment is always appreciated.

Thank you for reading this page. © PK2012