Secret Garden I

The subject of the 'secret garden' developed into a theme following Philipson's donation of a painting of that title in 1988 to a charity in celebration of Glasgow's Garden Festival. Philipson commented, 'I found myself enmeshed in circumstances of daydreaming that seemed to be timeless, and first place was given to that association of ideas and images sprung from the shadowed depths of consciousness rather than the illuminated world of logic. The Secret Garden became as it is, I think, for everyone, an attitude of mind: for me a recapitulation of old and favourite images - the zebra, the cattle, the irony of ladies and the fickleness of light. Through this evocation of timelessness drifted symbols of the rose window, the fighting cocks and fish with, for me, their secret overtones of association' (see W. Gordon Smith, Philipson, Edinburgh, 1995, p. 111).