This note accompanies the “Observation & Invention” exhibition located at SFFA Tradewynd Gallery, showing May 28 - July 26, 2025.
The first time I met Philip Geiger was in 1998 during my 4th year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He had just given a slide lecture on his work and was scheduled to give critiques to 3rd and 4th year students. In preparation for my critique, I had positioned a large “Christ in the tomb” painting I was working on in such a way so that he would immediately see it as he walked into my studio. I was trying to paint it in the vein of Rembrandt and French painter Eugene Carriere — thinly painted in the shadows, monochromatic, and with a “rendered” touch. After about 30 seconds upon entering my studio he quickly bypassed the Christ painting and moved to a group of landscape paintings I had done that I had pinned to my studio wall. Philip pointed at one of them and said “this is more of what I like…those little touches of paint, like Corot.” And I think this illustrates where Philip’s principles lie as a painter.
I believe the gravity in Philip’s work rests in how he perceives value. Philip has the ability to organize and categorize value that gives way for the viewers’ vision to see the big shifts in space, while also providing a way for the vision to slow down and hover around in the smaller and denser zones of the painting. Combine his unique understanding of value, along with his color-spot “touch”, and you start to see a similarity to Corot’s work. Much like when I see a Corot, I want to stare at it and even crawl inside the painting so I can somehow be part of it. That is one of the mysteries and wonders that paintings can provide, which Philip’s work certainly embodies.