Phil Whitman spent his childhood summers visiting America’s historic battlefield sites. Those frequent family trips fostered in him a deep interest in American military history and helped set a core theme in his artwork and professional endeavors.
Whitman attended Bowdoin College in Maine, intending to major in history, but quickly found himself drawn to the arts.
“The liberal arts curriculum enabled me to explore all sorts of fascinating subjects, and how they connected,” explained Whitman, who graduated as a double-major in History and Visual Art. “I loved how art allowed me to synthesize my new learning and various interests into something personally significant.”
After graduation, he was offered an internship at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, lived in Chicago, and then enrolled in a graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design. There he worked with artists from all over the world and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting. Following graduate school, he worked as a picture framer and a stonemason. He was then accepted into several prestigious artists’ residencies, including the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Cape Cod, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
In 2011, Whitman, along with his wife Kristen, and their two boys, Gib and Ned, moved to Poultney, Vermont. He began teaching Art History courses at Castleton while continuing to create unique history-inspired art pieces in his spare time.
Throughout this journey, Whitman continued to draw images from the battlefield parks and historical sites from his childhood. His work has been featured locally in Vermont at the Chaffee Art Center, Downtown Gallery in Rutland, and the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland.
His latest work recreates 19th-Century American painter James Hope's The Aftermath at Bloody Lane, using mediums he has on hand as a parent, like Crayola crayons. Whitman uses a pencil to depict the images of soldiers Hope recreated from the photographs taken on the battlefield. Their black and white lines stand out in contrast to the colorful landscape in the background.
Whitman now serves as the chairperson of the Castleton Art Department and chair of the General Education Committee of the Faculty Assembly. His vision for the department is to move from a singular declaration as a major to an emphasis on conceptual and contextual learning. He looks forward to working with new Castleton students each semester and continuing to evolve as an artist and learn from colleagues and students.
“Working with students is fulfilling,” he said. “Art is one of the Liberal Art disciplines. It’s going to prepare you for connecting a lot of different things.”