Phil Lofthouse is a painter based in Switzerland. His work develops through close observation of surfaces, materials and the traces left behind as spaces change.
My work comes out of paying attention to the spaces I work in. For several years this was Löwenberg in Schluein, a former institutional building in transition. I wasn’t trying to represent its history, but to work with what was left behind as it changed, including marks, residues, structures. I’ve moved on from that space, but it still shapes how I approach surfaces, materials and colour.
I often use different materials within the same painting and let them behave differently. Some parts are quick and procedural, others slow things down and hold more tension. I don’t try to resolve that.
Jute (hessian) has become important. It’s rough, open, and doesn’t fully cooperate. It breaks up sprayed forms and holds paint unevenly. Sometimes I use it as a support, sometimes as a stencil. It brings in a material that feels closer to transport or storage than to painting, and sits against more controlled structures.
Colour isn’t expressive in a traditional sense. I usually limit it to two colours. Choices come from what’s already there or from simple constraints. I use things like fluorescent construction colours alongside off-whites, greys or greens. The shift between those registers matters more than any single colour.
The work tends to develop in groups. Field Notes started from marks left after removing sockets and cables, circles and lines that exposed earlier layers. In the paintings they become reduced forms, more like records than symbols.
In Health and Safety, a floral tile pattern is repainted using fluorescent orange, pushing it from decoration towards warning.
In Within Tolerance, vertical bar structures repeat, with small bends inside an otherwise ordered system.
I’m interested in structures that look stable but aren’t completely fixed. Small deviations like bends, interruptions and inconsistencies are part of how they function.
I grew up in West Yorkshire, England, around disused industrial buildings and edges where things start to break down or get taken over again. That’s still in the background, but not something I try to pin down. The work stays close to what’s in front of me.
Phil Lofthouse (b. 1976, Keighley, UK) studied Fine Art Painting in the UK following a foundation in Brighton. After travelling in North America, he moved to Switzerland in 2002, where he worked for many years as an English teacher and college lecturer. Since 2021 he has worked as a full-time artist. He became a Swiss citizen in 2020 and is a member of Visarte Schweiz (since 2025).
