BACKSTORY: As a child, I was fascinated by the natural world. Days spent running outdoors often turned into little adventures - collecting flowers, studying insects and later pouring over books to learn more about them. I began drawing everything I discovered, first with crayons, then pencils, then ink, on whatever surface I could find: - paper, sidewalks, walls, notepads, even tennis shoes.

By my teenage years, I moved on to oil paintings and spent countless hours filling sketchbooks with studies, often copying the old masters. I even experimented on more unusual canvases - like blow out eggshells - decorating them with cathedrals and clipper ships and intricate designs. (But, that is another story.)

In college the flora inspiration took hold as I majored in landscape architecture, worked for the art history department and took children’s illustration classes for fun. Along with urban planning, a natural extension of landscape scaled to city and regional size, for the next forty years I practiced landscape architecture. Creating places and spaces for people and communities was a very fulfilling career as it was based on ecology, resiliency and beauty, and was all about connecting people to nature and nature to people - A philosophy that resonates with my core beliefs.

As a designer there was always a unique core idea or vision for each project to create an experiential and visual imprint as well as spatial harmony and unity to those who would experience the place. We endeavored to capture an experiential interplay between man and the environment. Sketching, drawing perspectives, creating image boards, utilizing photoshop were some of the art elements in our toolkit to present our ideas to clients. Doing my own art work in California throughout the years I had a firm was a natural extension for expressing the artist within me and important to keeping my inner artist fire lit.

Now that I have fully closed the doors to my firm April Philips Design Works, and opened the door to a new chapter as a full time artist, I am looking forward to this new journey of discovery as I focus on my internal creative process and see where it leads me.

Artist Statement:

Currently I see my art as an homage to the world around us; explorations of nature and human connection. Art “in Natura.”