Additional Images

Provenance:

Purchased directly from the artist

Exhibited:

The London Art Gallery, London, ON

Note:

PHILIP A.J. AZIZ (1923 - 2009)

"It has been said - the artist is a channeler of spirit, through the flow of grace.”

- Philip Aziz -

Philip Aziz was born in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1923, and grew up in London, Ontario. After graduating from Yale University with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1949 he travelled the world, living alternately in New York City and London, Ontario. From 1947 to 1949 Aziz was an art instructor at Yale University and a lecturer at various colleges and museums throughout Canada and the United States. From 1950 to 1955, Aziz lectured at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), teaching art and art history, as well as helping to expand the collection at UWO's McIntosh Gallery. He was UWO's first official artist in residence in 1953. In 1972 and 1976, Aziz was the artist in residence and lecturer at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in Aspen, Colorado.

Aziz painted commissioned portraits of Ontario's Progressive Conservative Premier the Honourable John Robarts, Governor-General Georges Vanier and Mrs. Vanier, noted Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, and mezzo-soprano opera star Risë Stevens.
In the late 1950s Aziz was commissioned by John Christopher Cody, London's seventh Catholic bishop, to transform the former Sacred Heart Chapel in London's St. Peter's Basilica into Christ the King Chapel, and design the interior of the Lady Chapel.

Aziz established the Philip Aziz Foundation of Art, a non-profit charity in London, to expand his gallery, built in 1967 as his Canadian Centennial project. Some of his more renowned works include: Follow Me, a tribute to he late Pope John Paul II; Celestial City, presented to Academy Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker Paul Haggis; and Tree of Lebanon, completed as a humanitarian fundraiser for relief efforts in Lebanon; the painting was to be displayed at the UN headquarters in New York City, after which it was to hang in the presidential palace in Lebanon.

Philip Aziz died in 2009, after a 10-year battle with cancer.

Selected Corporate, Private and Public Collections

Claridge Collection, Montreal, QC

Selected Awards and Honours

2009 Philip Aziz Avenue runs through the University of Western Ontario campus
2005 150 People Who Define London, published by the London Free Press
1968 Honorary Admiral in the Texas Navy, presented by Governor John Smith


Selected Group Exhibitions

2013 Group Exhibition featuring recent paintings by John Lennard, Thielsen Gallery, London, ON