Cece Philips is a British London-based painter whose luminous compositions explore ideas of spectatorship and voyeurism. Embodying the role and spirit of the flaneur, or flâneuse, her works draw on a multitude of sources, from the archive, film stills, found imagery, and memory she weaves together historical and contemporary influences to interrogate ideas of interiority, desire and loneliness. Framing is a recurring device in Philips’ paintings, though windows and doorways, barriers and veils are constructed to challenge an easy reading of her female protagonists. Palette, attention to light and space all lend psychological and narrative depth—details that lead us through and beyond the work, and activate the viewer’s own imagination.
