Philip studied Art and Design at Newcastle School of Art and Staffordshire University, finally attaining a Masters Degree in Design.
A native of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire shaped not only Phil’s climbing, but his artistic direction: trained as a ceramic designer. He worked for Wedgwood and Moorcroft before freelancing and painting full time as the pottery industry declined.
Phil Gibson is also well known in the climbing world for his drawings and paintings of mountain cliffs and outcrops.
He has held several exhibitions throughout England of his climbing drawings, one most notably of Clogwyn du’r Arddu in pen, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy. He received an important commission recently to produce a work to mark the centenary of what is believed to be the production of the first climbing guidebook This was the Climbers’ Club guide to LLiwedd in 1909.
Phil’s obsession with climbing began in 1973 on Staffordshire gritstone - ‘God's own Rock’ as he likes to call it, but inevitably and eventually he was to be tempted away by bigger and harder challenges abroad, climbing in Yosemite, the Rockies, the Alps and many other parts of Europe.
Art for guidebooks, as he likes to call it, started in 1979 when he was invited by The British Mountaineering Council to complete a series of drawings for a memorable Staffordshire Gritstone Guidebook. He now has a body of work approaching 300 drawings and paintings across many definitive guidebooks for the Climbers’ Club, the Yorkshire Mountaineering Club and the Mynydd Climbing Club.
Phil’s preferred medium is working, sometimes direct, with traditional pen and black ink on a white drawing board in front of the cliff - a brutal and uncompromising medium. Depending on the locale he is very much concerned in his paintings and drawings with balance and design, with attention to form, textures and surfaces.
Currently he is involved with a solo exhibition of his paintings and drawings entitled ‘A Climber's Perspective’ at the New Vic Theatre Newcaslle-under-Lyme, The Llanberis Mountain Film Festival, a joint exhibition with Tim Pollard at The Alpine Club in London, and later in the year The Kendal Mountain Film Festival.