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Larry Bob Phillips: Eye Dazzler & Picture, Picture

July 9, 2013 – August 31, 2014

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A two-panel, black-and-white mural installed on the wall of the Albuquerque Museum lobby. Each panel depicts the interior of a surreal room, surrounded by a faux frame.

Larry Bob Phillips, Eye Dazzler (left) & Picture, Picture (right), 2013, India ink and house paint on wall, lent by the artist

A detail image of the right half of a two-panel, black-and-white mural installed on the wall of the Albuquerque Museum lobby. The panel depicts the interior of a surreal room, surrounded by a faux frame.

Picture, Picture (detail)

A detail image of the left half of a two-panel, black-and-white mural installed on the wall of the Albuquerque Museum lobby. The panel depicts the interior of a surreal room, surrounded by a faux frame.

Eye Dazzler (detail)

An image of artist Larry Bob Phillips working on his mural Eye Dazzler. He is painting in black over a white background.

Larry Bob Phillips painting Eye Dazzler

Albuquerque Museum’s Visiting Artist program is generously funded by the Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

For a number of years, Albuquerque artist Larry Bob Phillips has been experimenting with illusion and the eye's ability to bring objects into focus. His lively combination of strong patterns and diverse line using only black and white creates and astounding diversity of shifting optical effects.

Phillips created these paintings directly on the lobby walls between July 9 and July 24, 2013. Eventually, these temporary works of art were painted over, only existing in the memories of each viewer.

In my recent work I have been using, to the best of my ability, the complete language of our inherited graphic traditions. I try to use different mark making logics and modes of representations in the same picture as analogies for other kinds of energies of experience. I try to interpret distance, focus, color, motion, etc. as vibrational differences in black and white marks.

—Larry Bob Phillips

A black-and-white headshot of artist Larry Bob Phillips, who wears a baseball cap and a collared shirt.

About the Artist

Larry Bob Phillips (born 1973 Canyon, Texas; lives Albuquerque, New Mexico) is a New Mexico-based painter, draftsman, and muralist. Phillips studied at the Kansas City Art Institute during the early 1990s and received an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2005. Throughout his career, Phillips has maintained a busy exhibition and mural schedule while teaching college-level art. In 2018, Phillips worked as the paint and pigment specialist for Meow Wolf. From 2019 to 2025, Phillips served as director of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program.

Larry Bob Phillip's Website