City Lit Student Spotlight: Phil Smyth

As the City Lit Foundation Art & Design Show is coming up soon, we caught up with City Lit student Phil Smyth about his time at City Lit, the upcoming exhibition at the Espacio Gallery, and his work as an artist.  

Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? And what role does art play in your life? 

I have a technology and business management background, most recently as Chief Data Officer and Head of Business Change at a management consultancy company focusing on the financial services sector. Alongside my career I indulged my artistic side by attending short courses from time to time to learn new creative skills. Making things such as fine wooden boxes and cabinets, automata, sculptures, silver jewellery, small leather work, bookbinding, drawing, watercolour painting and even fabricating the frame for my bicycle.    

What role does art play in your life, and why is it important to you?  

Art and craft for me was primarily about the simple joy of physically making something. Little of what I have worked so hard to achieve in my business career remains, things get swept away very quickly and ruthlessly. This same evolution occurs in art and craft but previous work does not have to be destroyed in the process. So a jewellery box or sculpture that I made 10 years ago can remain treasured possessions even after newer things come along.

Why did you choose City Lit and how has your time been on the Foundation Art and Design course so far? 

I have taken several short courses at City Lit over the last 5 years or so and have been so impressed upon every occasion. The standard of every aspect of the people and the place is incredible, far more like a university setting than an adult education one. As I thought about my next career step it dawned on me that I would really like to explore art a little more as a career break and whilst looking through the City Lit course list, I stumbled upon the Foundation in Art & Design.

This was a much bigger time commitment than I had been planning but I decided to avoid future regrets and take the plunge. Wow. Much more challenging than I had anticipated, a sometimes uncomfortable exploration of oneself is intimately intwined with the study of art practice. I was not fully prepared for this, my degree in biochemistry 30 years ago was a much more arm’s length affair. But this course was so rewarding, and I think life changing. I have glimpsed opportunities for creative exploration that will more than satisfy my curious mind indefinitely.

The enjoyment and study of other people’s art is an area that I have neglected prior to this course. I was an occasional visitor to the big exhibitions and visiting contemporary art galleries was always an enjoyable feature of city breaks. However my engagement was superficial and I had never really made the connection between studying other artists work to inform my own. That was a strange oversight, my education was largely focused on science, which is all about standing on the shoulders of what has gone before and peering a little further into the unknown. A big learning point from my time at City Lit has been how art evolves in much the same way as science: borrowing, combining and evolving to edge forwards. Research, experimentation and problem solving, with which I am very familiar from my science focused education and business career, it turns out, are equally essential to the endeavour of making art. 

Can you tell us a little bit more about the upcoming show and your work?

Our final show is a fascinatingly diverse range of work that represents the final term which was dedicated to an extended exploration of each student’s chosen topic using our two art specialisms, mine are printmaking and visual communication. My project focuses on the Thames, in particular its fascinating beauty as its flow is disrupted on its journey from source to sea, its central role in our lives as a source of water for much of London and the Thames Valley but also, sadly, our neglectful environmental abuse of it – a story so widely repeated as we carelessly conduct our lives. The work that I have submitted to the show is here, you can see more of what I have been up to on the course on Instagram.