I see painting as an opportunity to interact with the present. Having moved often as a child, I've spent much of my life wishing to be in another place—often using vivid fantasy as a way to escape the loneliness of the new. No amount of yearning or long-distance phone calls could mend the disconnect between a perceived home and the location of my body. By inviting chance into my art practice, I'm able to escape from this fantasy and revel in the ecstatic unknowns of the present moment.

The materials I use are difficult to control. I engage with ink, pastel, and textile as a curious spectator. My role is to tenderly initiate a reaction, knowing that the medium will bloom and tangle according to its own chemistry. In watching unknown gestures and atmospheres unfold, I rejoice in the collision of circumstances that have shaped this moment. My initial marks are unrecognisable once dried. Though it is in this moment of safe surrender that I begin to remember how it feels to be home.

Pip Atkinson: Fields and Tendrils
A Flag, Amsterdam NL
April 15th - June 01, 2022

Colourist & Brand Manager
Kooij, Zaandam NL
March 2018 - present

Business Model Defense: Luxury & Nostalgia in Fetish Footwear
Footwearists, Rotterdam NL
2017

Shoemaking Intensive
Footwearists, Vigevano IT
2016-2017

Speaker, Pecha Kucha Eindhoven
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven NL
2017

Exhibiting Artist, Future Late
Tate Modern, London UK
2016

BFA Integrated Studio Arts, Writing Minor
MIAD, Milwaukee WI
2012 - 2016

No More Tears: Pip Atkinson, Sarah Tyson and Kirsten Schmid
Comb Gallery, Milwaukee WI
2015

+1: Pip Atkinson, Sarah Tyson and Kirsten Schmid
Apt. A, Milwaukee WI
2014

Swim Team Presents: Pip Atkinson, Annie Levit, Elizabeth Rath
Netherlands Gallery, Milwaukee WI
2014

Board of Trustees Full Scholarship
MIAD, Milwaukee WI
2012 - 2016

Phillipa Atkinson was born in 1994 in Canberra, Australia, and is currently based in Zaandam, The Netherlands. Having relocated to the US as a child, she went on to receive her BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2016. Since graduating, she has worked as a full-time colourist at her partner's furniture label, Kooij. Working on heavy, large-scale projects, Pip has learned to favour intuition through composing furniture pieces using her full body. This trust in body, rather than in the rational mind, is the precursor to her explorations as a painter. Her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, The Milwaukee Art Museum, and now, after a 5-year hiatus, she shows new work at A Flag, Amsterdam.

Find here a small collection of experiments, comforts, and progressions. Situated in the factory-home my partner and I call home, my studio sits above a workshop that has had my full attention for the last 4 years. In a steady departure from my role as colourist, my studio practice is soundtracked by the familiar orchestra of CNCs, lathes, saws, and extruders.

The decision to return to art was one pre-mediated by grief. With mortality emerging as a prominent theme in my life, I realised I wanted to die an artist. The work here is made as a reflection of self, and appreciation of my environment, and a reverence for materials.

Time spent here is supplemented by long walks in nature with my cats. For each hour spent painting, I have spent countless hours just looking.