As we travel and move from rental to rental, Mr. Forager and I talk a lot about our future permanent home. We think about our ideal life, which, aside from a smallish house in the Northwest, can be a pretty fluid concept for us. We see so many people striving for that “perfect” life, the one we are told we should have, a big house in suburbia, perfectly manicured lawn and all. The work of Joseph Phillips website embodies this obsession in succinctly drawn works depicting dissections of perceived perfection.
Scenes of neatly trimmed grass and crystal clear pools are isolated against a white background and we see from the outside looking in that these are manufactured replicas of an idealized life.
The utopian ideals take on a slightly sinister, Stepford-like aura, where perfect grass is revealed to be carpet, where pine and palms live together, where a perfect house comes with a bunker, acknowledging that life isn’t anywhere near perfect.
To see more of Joseph Phillip’s work, please visit his Joseph Phillips website.
Artist found via New American Paintings blog. All images are via the artist’s Joseph Phillips website.