Brief artist background notes:
Currans Hill artist Phil Carrero started as an impressionable 16 year old drawing charcoal portraits through the streets of Buenos Aires. He worked his way up from drawing to painting and begun to sell his works around that time.
Coming to Australia in 1973 , at the age of 23, Mr Carrero continued his studies in Art and completed an art apprenticeship to get himself better acquainted with portraiture painting. Meanwhile, for almost ten years produced and sold many ship portraits and marine paintings. -After that he begun getting around 12 commissions a year for just portraits. That’s the point when he begun to make a living out of painting-, he maintains. He paints in the Traditional, Realistic style … English and Italian schools, his portraits can resemble the Grand Manner style of the 19th and 20th centuries in England and later, Europe and the New World.
(extracted from “Artist has brush with thieves”, Macarthur Advertiser, January 2004)
During his teens two developments left life-lasting impressions that gradually became his passion. Drawing, which later became oil painting, and pole vaulting. They both became consuming activities to which he would dedicate every waking hour, and which left little or no room for anything else. By the time he was 19 in the late 60′s, his technical paintings with spatula were selling very well to his amazement, and he went over a world class 4.20 m pole vaulting with old-school aluminium poles.
In the late nineties Phillip proposed to the Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre to paint sports portraits of athletes that had competed in Sydney through the years. The proceeds would go towards buying poles for up and coming pole vaulters. After a due verification of credentials he was provided the wall space and the exposure which made this possible!
This marks an important stage in Phillip’s timeline in that his passions of painting and athletics came together. 90% and more of his commissions from then on were paintings from athletes in action. Some went to display at the Olympic Centre, others direct to athletes, while some went to form collections overseas.
“Happiness is to be so busy doing what we love that there is little time left for anything else”
Phil’s mission ultimately, is to bring fine art into people’s homes by creating portraits of those they love and are special to them, whether they be sports portraits or otherwise. It is his wish to have everyone surrounded each day with beautiful images from their lives. He is deeply grateful to his clients, friends and family for their engaging support, which has allowed him the opportunity to make portrait painting his life’s work.