art

Philip Swarbrick was born in South Africa in 1946. During his pre-teens he attended a beach which was inhabited by mainly male sunbathers who sprawled out in the sanctuary of the sand dunes. As he reached the early teens, the male form he admired and featured in drawings fused with a progressively emerging homosexuality. The drawings disturbed family and peers and Philip's venture into this sort of art was abruptly curtailed. Conscripted into the South Africa Police he was forced to regurarly raid the cruising areas around Durban and, becoming meanwhile more politically aware, to enforce apartheid, so it became impossible to live in S.A. and had to leave the country. Arriving in London, Swarbrick suppressed the homosexual content of his work and became known as a painter of anti-apartheid themes. His first one-man exhibition was dedicated to polical issues and entitled Witness to Apartheid and Post Modern Blues; it was held in London in 1987. The exhibition nearly sold out; after many years as an illustrator for the AD Comics Group and as an art lecturer and Head of Art History at New College Swindon, Philip gave up these jobs and devote himself full time to painting returning to the male nude, his original passion since his early teens. Philip Swarbrick incorporates his experience of being gay in apartheid South Africa and explores the hidden world of hedonistic sadism. It is a world that is sleazy and knowing, where sex is bought and sold, and where art has been afraid to tread. Much of his work is the culmination of a journey of self-discovery that began on the beaches of Durban in the 1960’s and ends in the urban jungle of London. Paintings' titles are "Hustlers", "The new client", "Bordello Boys", "Dog Boy", "Spoilt for choice"....