P H I L I P R O S S M U N R O
THE DIALOGUE DRAWINGS
These Pen and Inks are melodies of spirit and conversation. They are often as simple as a single line.
Good Morning, where are my shoelaces? Who are you?
THE BOX SERIES aka The Skinnerians: 1997 - ongoing
When I was born they took me home and put me in a box. It had alarmed control systems for temperature, light, humidity and air flow. It was a large box measuring 6 ft. x 5 ft. by 2.5 ft. with double glass doors at the waist height of the average adult. Behind the doors was a removable washable mat. That’s where I resided as an infant.
The behavioral Psychologist B. F. Skinner had designed it. He marketed it under the name of ‘The Baby Tender’. In our family it was simply referred to as ‘The Box’. My brother and sister also lived in the box, but not at the same time that I did. In the box I was unencumbered, with no need for blankets, as a diapered infant I could roll about and eventually, as I grew, I could enjoy toys that were hung in the box. I was taken out of the box to be fed and, I am told, also to be played with.
While many are horrified by the concept I believe that the box, in some ways, echoed the womb, except of course for the fact that it had large windows. There was complete freedom without blankets pinning me to the bottom of a crib. I had my own creative control and it was uniformly warm.
The Skinner Series is a reflection on situations, emotions and thought. It uses texts including partially hidden words in a manner illustrating the vagaries of what we may recognize, divulge or choose to carry as potentially secretive circumstances. It co-relates the psychological experiences of emotional thought and visceral reaction.
This series has never been exhibited.
Click on the image to see more
MINI MONOTYPES 1993
In the 1990's I had a studio in the Naval Shipyards at Hunter's Point in South San Francisco. There were clapboard wooden walls and no heat so I downsized production and started used my dining room at the house in Corona Heights as a studio.
Without an actual press to create prints I began sketching with ink on sheets of plexiglass and then used my body weight, standing on the reversed plexi over Arches paper.
The images in this series express the union and meeting of beings
THE BILLBOARD SERIES
This body of mixed media works on paper derive their origins from four choreographers who were commissioned to create a Joffrey executed Rock Ballet based on the music of Prince. Like the mini monotypes these works were drawn in reverse, inked and pressed using my body weight.
Billboards #9, MIxed Media
EARLY WORKS:
'Drawing is one of the core elements of my creativity: a spontaneous compulsion in layers and structure. As a small child I often lay in front of the fire at night and visualized the logs as geometrically decomposing entities like futurist structures perched at Zabriskie Point which, as a student of engineering, many years later seemed oddly familiar'.
More early works on paper from the fish series, The Rite of Spring Series and others can be seen at the studio and will soon be digitized for this website
'Fish', Pen and Ink on paper
GESTURAL PORTRAITS, MADONNAS AND MASKS 1976 - 2021
The face paintings by Philip Ross Munro found their origins in the work of a German Artist whose painting of the Madonna may be found in the Chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Rome. While as a student in the Atelier of Fresco at The Beaux Arts, Munro used this Madonna as the catalyst for his first original fresco painting. Since that time, Munro has continued periodically to add images to his production of Madonna and Gestural portraits. These works are larger than human scale.
Limited Edition fine art prints and a small number of originals are available from the collection of the artist.
'Joan', 21x29" Gouache on paper, 1984