Philip John Evett: Sculpture and Drawings

Philip John Evett was born in Swanscombe, Kent, England in 1923. His formal art education began in 1938 with a scholarship to the Cambridge College of Art. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Evett studied sculpture at the Belfast College of Art in Ireland on the British equivalent of the GI Bill. He returned to England seeking practical experience by working for an ecclesiastical restoration firm, repairing bomb damaged cathedrals and churches and cutting letters on war memorials. From 1952-1954, he taught at the Cambridge College of Art. In 1954, Evett moved to Austin, Texas, where he focused on portrait commissions of Texas notables such as J. Frank Dobie, Sam Houston, and Governor Allen Shivers. In 1956, he moved to San Antonio, subsequently teaching sculpture and figure drawing from 1958-61 at the San Antonio Art Institute. From 1962 until his retirement in 1988 he was the professor of sculpture at Trinity University. Early in the 1970's Evett began sculpting in wood, a medium he has used exclusively since he retired to his home and studio in the Texas Hill Country. During his long career, he has participated in more than 50 group and solo shows including one-person exhibitions at the Tyler Museum of Art in 2004, the McNay Art Museum in 2005, and the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in 2011. Evett's work can be found in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, London, England; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; San Antonio Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas; Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas; Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas; The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas; Montclair Museum, Montclair, New Jersey; Roswell Museum, Roswell, New Mexico; and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, Oklahoma.

In her essay for the McNay Art Museum's 1985 retrospective catalogue, Philip John Evett, Drawing in Space, Norris J. Ferguson writes, Philip John Evett has pursued his own course as an artist, independent of the mainstream of contemporary art. His intuitive sense of form, combined with aesthetics which evolved during the first decades of the twentieth century in Europe, with their emphasis on the reduction of form to its essentials, have resulted in works of great formal integrity and expressive power. In his sculpture, media and subject matter are bound together in rare harmony. The female figure, which for Evett is the ultimate source of inspiration, is a highly flexible vehicle for the conveyance of his humanist concerns, and of his optimistic faith in the future of mankind.

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