“The School of Beauty & Goodness”
January 4 - February 22, 2025
This exhibition featuring Philip Geiger and six of his former students is the first in a series of exhibitions celebrating the work of Philip Geiger. The title, The School of Beauty & Goodness, was inspired by reading the January 11, 2023, interview conversation with Philip Geiger by Jeffrey Carr in the Painting Perceptions online blog magazine. The interview gives fabulous insight into Phil’s painting philosophy, working process, and influences. It is Phil’s answer to Jeffrey’s final question that helped me to not only connect better to Phil’s work but to realize a higher purpose in my own life’s work. Our work can only be as good as who we are — and, what’s more important, who we want to be.
Jeffrey: “Is you subject matter about beauty?”
Philip: “I’m trying. I think I’m trying. I think that that’s the connection. It’s absurd to compare myself to Ingres or Degas or to their great achievements of beauty. But that is what motivates me. That is what gets me turned on to make a painting. We’re connected to that. Why else would you go through all of this if you don’t get to be in the proximity to beauty? It’s not very good as a social commentary. Hopefully, we give it a new visible form that you can communicate with somebody else. I think that’s at the center. We wouldn’t be going about this backward sort of activity for any other reason.”
—Steven Francis Coates, January 2025