Philip Paradise
20th c. Modern Watercolor
American, (1905–1997)
Phil Paradise was born in 1905 in Oregon, and spent his childhood in Bakersfield, California. After graduating from high school he attended the Chouinard Art Institute, studying with Frank Tolles Chamberlin, Rico Lebrun and Leon Kroll. He worked in a regional style in the 1920s and 1930s that received much attention, depicting ranches, isolated homesteads of the Western desert, and pastures with horses. In the mid-1940s a change occured in his style, and Paradise began travelling and working in a more stylized manner. His works during this period reveal villages, landscapes, and people from Mexico, Central America, and various Caribbean countries.
Paradise taught at the Chouinard Art Institute and Scripps College. He also worked as an artist in the movie industry and did some commercial illustration. In the 1940's he began printmaking, and set up a workshop in Cambria, California in which he produced limited edition serigraph prints.