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Tom Phillips was born in London in 1937. He attended St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1957, where he read English and at the same time studied drawing at the Ruskin School. In 1961 he went to Camberwell School of Art where his chief source of inspiration was Frank Auerbach. He went on to teach at the Bath Academy of Art, Ipswich and Wolverhampton Art College between 1965 and 1972.
Phillips's first one-man show was in 1965 at the Artists' International Association Gallery in London, to be followed by an exhibition in 1970 at the Angela Flowers Gallery. He won a prize at The John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1969 and subsequently went on to show in many solo and group exhibitions, both in the UK and abroad. Two early exhibitions of particular significance were the 1973 showing of A Humument in its entirety at the ICA and the 1975 retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel. In 1989 he had a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (which holds his portrait of Dame Iris Murdoch) and in 1993 a major exhibition of his work was held at the Royal Academy of Arts. To celebrate his 60th birthday in 1997, retrospectives of his work were held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the South London Gallery. More recently in 2001 an exhibition of his drawings was held at the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth.
Phillips was Vice-Chair of the Copyright Council from 1985 to 1989 and has been Chairman of the Royal Academy's Exhibitions Committee since 1995. He curated the Royal Academy's exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent, held in 1995, which subsequently travelled to the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He was appointed a Member of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers in 1987 and an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1999. He was made an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford and of Leeds University (Bretton Hall). Similarly, he is an Honorary Fellow of the London Institute, an Honorary Member of the Royal Institute, a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery (since 1998) and a Trustee of the British Museum (since 1999). Phillips is also a writer and a composer. Much of his music (including the opera Irma has been broadcast and appears on CD). Tom Phillips lives and works in London.
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