Phil was born and raised in Flushing, Queens. His Dad played big band jazz and sang Opera. Phil painted a mural on the wall of his Jr HS across from the library, of Romeo and Juliet.They never caught him (actually it was 6 foot by 8 foot and took over two months).
In college at the University of Illinois, Phil loved his freehand drawing class but quit the Architecture program after one semester. Eventually getting a degree in Communications/Radio-TV. He helped start Record Service while still in school and worked at making it the best record/CD store in central Illinois for 34 years.
At the same time Phil played in bands (Bloom and Brownfield and the Rocking Clones) stayed active on the High n Mighty softball team and appeared in over 35 theatre productions, mostly at the Station Theatre. All the while Phil was using his creativity doing all the advertising for the Record Service (and mentoring and hiring HS students to do drawings for our ads)
Phil also encouraged many local musicians and bands to record and sell local records and put out three records on his own label as well as a Record Service compilation of twenty years of music from C-U.. And eventually took up writing for some local papers and magazines about local music, theatre and art.
Since 2004 when the music industry collapse caused Record Service to implode, Phil has worked extensively on his painting developing a style of painting on glass quite different from anything else he has seen. Using Van Gogh and graphic novels as two of his inspirations he has been carving out a niche while producing over 300 paintings.
In the last three years much of his work has been portraits of avatars he meets in the virtual world of Second Life but he also works in real life as well and has started painting local artists.And most importantly Phil has two great kids who inspire him to be a better person, Tess and Joe Strang.Air Jordan 4 "Purple Metallic" White/Court Purple-Metallic Silver For Sale