VIBES Coast CHASING DREAMS

Phil Meatchem’s journey from high-flying TV director to artist

WORDS JENNIFER ENNION

When you come across Phil Meatchem’s rich paintings you assume he’s been honing his craft his entire life; that perhaps he studied at a prestigious Sydney academy, and that exhibiting in galleries is run-of-the-mill. But that’s far from the truth, despite the fact that art has always been his passion.

As a boy, Phil loved to draw. He recalls being excused from class to paint murals on school walls. School wasn’t for him, but art was. At age eight, he was ‘blown away’ by Disney’s The Jungle Book. Animation was his path, he told himself. He leapt onto that path at age 16 when he scored a job as an animator at a small Sydney studio. He started at the bottom and, over 40 years as the company grew, Phil worked his way up to animation director and live action director of TV commercials. At the start, it was a dream job that involved storyboarding, designing sets and outfits, and animation but, as pressure mounted and creative input dwindled, the work soured.

Around five years ago, Phil signed off on his last commercial.

‘Like every career, it starts to eat you,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t the person that I wanted to be.’

The death of his father pushed Phil to cut himself off from his ‘very Hollywood’ fast life of board meetings and travel.

‘I had no control over [quitting],’ he says. ‘I was a zombie and just went with my heart and my gut.

‘I used to go to the Archibald [Prize] every year and I wouldn’t admire anything,’ he adds. ‘I would just walk out of there angry.’ He would be left thinking: ‘I can do better than that guy.’

Eventually he did.

After leaving his job, Phil entered his first Archibald – an acrylic portrait of comedic actor Francis Greenslade – and was listed as a finalist.

‘That’s still the highlight of my painting, being hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales,’ he says from his Tumbi Umbi home. He’s been entering the Archibald ever since, along with competitions such as the Gallipoli Art Prize, for which he was a finalist for a portrait of one of Papua New Guinea’s wartime Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels. He most recently won the Fun Fakes category in Tuggerah Lakes Art Society’s 2022 Fab Fakes competition, focused on remaking classic artworks. Phil’s other work includes life-like portraits of famous people including David Attenborough, a ‘70s-inspired series of a surfer chick and landscapes.

Part of Phil’s transition to full-time artist was moving to the Central Coast to live a more humble existence.

‘I sold the house and started renting and painting, and keeping it real simple, living like the old masters used to live,’ he says. ‘Paint a picture to pay the rent, basically.’

As for the next stage in Phil’s journey, he says: ‘What’s happening with me lately with these art prizes is I’m stoked to be finalists but now I’m thinking, ‘okay I wanna win one’.’

You can see Phil’s art on the walls of The Glass Onion Society café at Long Jetty, as well as on Instagram @philmeatchem