‘Flame in the Pasture’ - Abstract original painting by Phil Kurz

Medium: Oil on bookboard (signed & dated on back)
Size: 15.5 x 13”, unframed

About the artist: Phil Kurz was born in Washington, D.C. in 1951 and lived, worked and exhibited within a few miles of there in Kensington, Maryland. His extended family had already spawned generations of painters, dancers, artisans and writers who saw the beauty in the world and tried to share that with others. Phil’s keen intelligence was drawn to studying world history, political systems and the Chinese language, before taking off to experiment with a sixties communal life-style in Boulder, Colorado. Phil soon returned to Maryland; began studying at the Maryland College of Art and Design in Silver Spring, producing serigraphs and early gouache paintings. However, his formal education was derailed by illness and he stopped being able to function for a time.
  His life was marked by periods of great creativity deflated by long dormant periods when combinations of therapeutic methods and medications were tried and tried again in an attempt to help him. Finally, Phil was able to better harness the benefits of medication, strict diet, exercise and, of course, creating art. He never stopped studying and teaching himself world religions, art history & techniques, philosophy, iconography and music notation. Though Phil never used the term “Outsider Artist” (and hated labels,) the term fits as well as any to describe his status in the Art World.
  Over the next several decades, Phil realized a body of work astonishing both in its breadth and its beauty. He disparagingly called himself “an Extremist, Overpopulated Singleton, whose Life was good only because of his Ignorance. ” Even so, he also became a much-loved and respected member of his Kensington community.
  Phil’s work shows the influences of the Russian Expressionists and Asian artists he most admired, yet it is uniquely his own. In addition to his myriad drawings and paintings, Phil was an incredibly prolific writer. He developed an extensive comic-strip/graphic-novel, produced journals, a revolutionary manifesto, scrapbooks, abstract visual narratives, all enclosed in his custom wood-crafted boxes. He produced five volumes of handwritten philosophical treatises in which he outlined his own religion in a book called The Flute of God. His religion drew on Animism, Hinduism, Christianity and other world systems and was the inspiration for most of his abstract images. Like his art, his vision was original and its bedrock was clear: Love and kindness for everyone.

  Phil Kurz, departed Planet Earth on July 22, 2016. He has left a void. He has also left his work – and memories of a life dedicated to fighting for love, beauty, and kindness.

For more of Phil Kurz’ story and art, visit
http://cynhat.squarespace.com/phil-kurz/
or contact Cynthia Hatfield at:
46 White Pine Dr.
Asheville, NC 28805
340-690-6495
cynhat@gmail.com

• Name : Cynthia Hatfield