Philip Lawrence Sherrod has been painting raw, earthy expressionist pictures for more than two decades. Now that expressionism is back in vogue, one would expect his work to be hailed by critics as a typical manifestation of the new spirit, but that hasn’t happened.  It may be that his work is too authentically expressionist and that the new fashion in expressionism calls for a self-conciousness and hip reference to sources that Sherrod’s painting doesn’t contain. It isn’t that his work is without sources: Delacroix, Van Gogh, Ensor, Soutine come immediately to mind. And it isn’t that he is naive; like most artists he takes what is useful to him from imagery around him. But his paintings are direct expressions of what  is going on inside his mind.  They are uncalculated, unedited, and some- times almost unbearably vulgar outpourings of his psyche, diametrically opposed to the contrived emotionalism of the more sophisticated” neo-expressionists.”   Sherrod’s paintings/- often embarrass us, for they allow us to peer more deeply into the churning mind of the artist than is comfortable. There  are feelings and yearnings revealed that we would, perhaps, rather not know about. But isn’t that what authentic expressionism is really about?  Expressionism is not a particular style or manner of painting, but a spontaneous outpouring of the ideas, images, and emotions at the core of the artist’s life.

Excerpt from Foreword/-Sherrod Catalog- (61 Painting Exhibition)
Thomas W. Leavitt, Director,
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 1985

philip lawrence sherrod,NA