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Jay McPhillips grew up in Philadelphia where he enjoyed summer art classes at Moore College of Art, street hockey and soft pretzels. Recognizing the lack of funding in street hockey or pretzel consumption, Jay believed there would be slightly more opportunity in art. Slightly.
After graduating from high school, Jay attended the University of Delaware and received a degree in Visual Communication. He then took the leap and accepted a job with a large ad agency in New York City. He promoted everything from chewing gum to The Guggenheim Museum. The agency life taught Jay the value of 80-hour work weeks, coffee and free muffins after executive meetings. After three years in New York, Jay moved to Portland, Maine to study painting at the Maine College of Art and freelance as a graphic designer. He then relocated to Portland, Oregon for ad agency work and some more painting. Having exhausted places named Portland, he returned to the Mid-Atlantic region. He took a job as an advertising creative for the cable television network, Comedy Central in New York. This time he chose to commute (2.5 hours each way) from a studio in Lambertville, New Jersey. After three years, though the work was very rewarding, Jay decided to find work closer to home and spend more of his time painting. After 5 years working as Princeton's McCarter Theatre's graphic designer, Jay left to pursue more painting and freelance design work from his home in Warminster, Bucks County, PA. Though his design work can be fulfilling, painting offers Jay a creative outlet not often found in the fluorescent, non-dairy creamer atmosphere of the office world.
McPhillips’ first solo painting show took place in August, 2004 at Riverrun Gallery in Lambertville, NJ. The subject was impressionist style paintings of the new housing developments, construction sites and strip malls of Bucks County, Pennsylvania and Central New Jersey. Jay has also shown work at Riverbank Arts (Stockton, NJ), Coryell Gallery at the Porkyard (Lambertville, NJ), Prallsville Mill Gallery (Stockton, NJ) and The Cafe at Rosemont (Rosemont, NJ).
Commercially, Jay’s work has been on billboards in Time Square, NY bus sides, NY bus shelters; magazines: Rollingstone, Variety, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Details, Timeout, and many more. In addition, Jay has written, illustrated and self-published three books (Cooler Than TV and Now Firing) and has just completed his latest book Staff Pick (a splendid collection of over 200 humorous doodles and notions!) on sale now through this site and at bookstores near you. If you happen to be from The Pulitzer comittee, again, Mr. McPhillips is eternally grateful for your consideration.
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