Biennial. John Davies, a Liverpool Church of England vicar chose Absolon's Job Club as his picture of the month in February 2005, saying, "Of all the striking paintings in The Stuckists: Punk Victorian exhibition ... Philip Absolon's hit me hardest. I get the impression a lot of Stuckists are well used to life on society's fringes, on the receiving end of welfare-to-work policies which just don't work for many. Absolon's pictures – many in this style and on this theme – seem born out of the awful experience of sitting in places like Job Clubs and feeling, well, skeletal, living dead." In July 2006, he was selected by Matt Price for the Saatchi Gallery Your Gallery: Critic's Choice. Price said: Absolon was one of the ten "leading Stuckists" in the Go West exhibition at Spectrum London gallery in October 2006. He travels Europe by train in order to visit art museums and palaces. He has a strong interest in the German Hohenzollern Empire (1871–1918), and likes The Arts Club in Mayfair, London. He lives in a cottage in Norfolk, England. Art Absolon has drawn regularly since he was sixteen, and still attends courses on sculpture, life drawing and painting. He always carries a sketch book with him, drawing, for example, customers in cafés. He studies cats in movement and draws them. Cats and skeletons are the main subjects in his work, which can be compared to Outsider Art, but has much greater depth. His working method is to enlarge the original drawing on a photocopier and then trace it onto the canvas with dressmaker's tracing paper. He usually paints from 8 to 10 at night. One of his paintings may take up to a month to complete. He described the origin of his painting, Job Club: Gallery See also Outsider Art References External links Absolon on the Stuckism web site Absolon family site John Davies picture of the month 1960 births Living people People from Erith 20th-century English painters 20th-century English male artists English male painters 21st-century English painters 21st-century English male artists Modern painters Alumni of the University for the Creative Arts Stuckism English contemporary artists