Artist with degrees in Architecture (Washington State University) and South Asian Art History (The Ohio State University) who, at age 60, has never been able to hold a "real" full time job for more than three months or a part time job for more than three years but keeps returning to image making.

For me Art is about life and consciousness. I am interested in how physical existence in general and living systems in particular comes into existence. Parallel to that is a need to understand the nature of consciousness - how is it that we can perceive and think and how is our mind and sense of being organized to allow us to think and be at all.

The son of the United Methodist Preacher, the Reverend Doctor Joe A. Harding, and Master of Arts councilor and therapist Lucy W. Harding, Philip was given the time and support to pursue his Art and his studies where ever it needed to go. Ultimately that led to studies in Sacred Geometry, Art and Architecture with a focus on South Asia, independent studies in Comparative cultures including South Asian Tantric art and Western Alchemical traditions from a Jungian perspective. In his early 20's Philip came to the conclusion that he has an enormous capacity for self deception and he changed from seeing himself as a mystic with an interest in asceticism to an atheist with an interest in the evolutionary biology of consciousness. He regards Western Alchemy, South Asian Tantric methodologies, and modern Psychotherapeutic practices focused on self actualization as simply three of many different ways to understand the nature of consciousness and being. Philip finds the only thing left for a person to do with knowledge of such traditions and a personal perspective born from such studies is to try and make art. I see art not as a form of self expression but as a practice for exploration. I try to make images that resonate with my sense of order and beauty - my left brained sense of rational structure in the form of geometry and my right brain aesthetic sensibilities in the form of natural or organic beauty. In short, I want my art to support as much thinking and feeling that I am able to bring to it.