Adelaide artist Jungle Phillips is dying. Meet him while you still can | Peter Goers
The award-winning artist is in his final months, writes Peter Goers. But we can help him and we should.
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We are sitting and shooting the breeze.
The award-winning artist Jungle Phillips and I are sitting on lovely antique chairs in his neat and tidy kitchen which is also a riot of art. “Someone left these chairs in my driveway.
Wasn’t that nice? You know, people are nice.”
At home I plonk in a huge leather armchair which Jungle scored as hard rubbish and painted with the word hope. It’s the hope chair. These days I hope I can get out of it easily. Hope is Jungle’s favourite word.
Jungle Phillips is one of the two sweetest men I’ve ever known.
There’s not a mean bone in their bodies.
Amid all of Jungle’s paintings which vibrate with life we are talking about death. Jungle has an intellectual disability, diabetes and schizophrenia.
Jungle is dying. Jungle has terminal liver cancer and has six months to live.
“I hope to make it to my 69th birthday on June 27 and I hope to be in this year’s SALA (South Australian Living Artists) Festival.
“I hope I can keep painting and keep dancing. That’s all I want. I’m not sad about dying. I accept it. I’ve made my peace.”
Jungle is my mate.
We talk often and I’ve never known him to complain or be self-pitying. He is a happy man. His art is a smile for the world.
Peter Phillips was raised in Hobart. His five siblings and parents are all dead.
His father was a violent drunk and Peter endured “daily beatings and ridicule.”
As a young man he escaped to Melbourne and found “the brotherhood of bikies.
They nicknamed me “Jungle” because I was thick and dense.” He loves the name.
His brother Steven killed himself in front of Jungle and another brother, Wayne, died mysteriously.
“I buried Wayne. I physically buried him. It was my way of paying respect.”
He escaped the bikies and came to Adelaide in 1991 and eventually forswore alcohol and, inspired by a mentor in a psychiatric hospital, began to paint. Art healed him.
“It made me who I am.”
His art fills his Housing Trust maisonette, spills out on to the front yard and decorates the front fence.
His house is a landmark and his home/gallery at 558 Marion Road, Plympton Park is hard to miss and don’t miss visiting it.
Jungle says, “I paint with my heart and nothing is more important than heart. And art.”
Naive artists and artists with a disability are known as “outsider artists”.
Adelaide has many but most exceptional among them are Jungle, Kurt Bosecke and Lewis Constantine.
Many outsider artists have an association with artist, teacher and facilitator Henry Jock Walker who is a living saint.
The work of these artists sings. It is a vision of their souls dancing.
Jungle loves to paint and he also loves to dance. He met his great friend Fran, twelve years ago, dancing. He loves Fran.
“I’ve had a hard life but I’m so lucky I found art, love, hope, joy and Fran.”
Jungle forgave his father and forgiveness is power.
“The public is very supportive of me, I suppose I’m the people’s artist. It’s all for them.”
Go and see Jungle’s work and meet a fine man.
Help him in his final months. Take your kids. Kids love Jungle’s paintings. His work is very reasonably priced and just like him – accessible.
One of Jungle’s great gifts is that he makes you feel better about yourself.
He is dancing through our lives and making art and giving hope and joy.
Paintings on the front fence bear the words “love orl” and “HART”. Hart is art with heart and it beats on for us forever.
Peter.goers@news.com.au
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