The career of my friend the artist, printmaker and art school lecturer Philip Reeves, who has died aged 85, coincided with a radical, international shift in the status of limited edition printmaking as an art form rather than a craft.
The son of Bert Reeves, a printer and proofreader, and his wife, Lillian (nee Langford), Philip was one of twin boys born in Cheltenham. He went to school locally, then trained at Cheltenham School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London (RCA), after undertaking national service, serving in the 8th Royal Tank Regiment. Posted to North Africa, he always had a sketchbook to hand at the camp near Tripoli, Libya.
When he started out as a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art in the mid-1950s, an original print was considered an adjunct to the decorative arts. Book illustration, in the tradition of Rembrandt and Whistler, was as high as etching or wood engraving might aim. Philip learned this craft as a student at the RCA, but by the 60s he was aware that prints had taken on a significant new role equal to painting itself, and that his students had to be made aware of this.
His own prints grew larger and more ambitious. Their apparent simplicity, or economy of statement, was subtler than one might guess. They were also related closely to collage and assemblage. Philip challenged the conventional rectangular format of the printed image, inking up metal scraps and back-street “found objects” and putting them rather dangerously through the presses. The resulting images were fresh and unexpected.
Philip’s work developed so that there was less emphasis on the printed image and more on collage. In his small studio in Glasgow, apparently unrelated fragments – discarded scraps, old envelopes and corrugated cardboard – were transformed into a new significance. He was no realist, but his abstractions related to specific experiences or places. He was quite clear about this and expected his “viewers” to see with his eyes. I visited him regularly to look at and talk about his work.
Although landscape figured often, Philip was just as much inspired by the city, its high rises, car parks, street furniture and bridges as by rural hills, the West Highland Way or Caithness shoreline. There are times when a minimal abstraction takes over entirely, exploring geometries and structures for their own sake. Given his emphasis on the self-sufficiency of such subject matter, the opulence of his love of pure colour can seem surprising and stimulating.
Many Scottish institutions held and exhibited his work, among them Aberdeen Art Gallery, Lillie Art Gallery, Glasgow School of Art, the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow and Paisley Museum and Art Galleries. He was also selected for the Royal Academy summer exhibition.
Philip is survived by his daughter, Paula, from his marriage to Christine MacLaren, from whom he separated in 1979, and by his grandchildren, Murray and Isla. For more than 30 years his partner was Janet Anthony.
