Philip Mullen Art Gallery Reception

The Upstairs Gallery at the Koger Center for the Arts is honored to showcase the newest Philip Mullen exhibit titled Mullen 2017-2020. The
exhibit will open March 18, 2020 at 5:30pm to the public and will include a talk with the Verner Award winning artist beginning at 6:00pm.
Philip Mullen came to South Carolina in 1969 to teach at the University of South Carolina and is
one of the most renowned artists in the state. He is the only living South Carolina artist to have
been featured in the prestigious Whitney Biennial by the Whitney Museum of American Art in
New York in 1975. His works are also included in the State Art Collection, and others are part of
the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Brooklyn Museum,
Columbia Museum of Art, Greenville County Museum of Art, and McKissick Museum. Philip
won the 2020 Verner Award for Lifetime Achievement which is one of South Carolina’s highest
awards for achievement in the arts presented by the South Carolina Arts Commission.
Artist Statement: “Paintings should be started fast and finished slow. The slower the finish the
longer the creativity remains in the artist’s mind and the less likely that the work will be declared
done prematurely. The new Koger show includes the slowest and richest group of paintings in
my career. The most recent work in this show, a 6×10 foot canvas, was put on the current canvas
in 1992, with parts of unfinished paintings from as long ago as 1976 used as collage, and finished
in 2020: A forty-four year painting.”