Philip Gardner came late to painting although he had been drawing all his life. He was educated at Bedford School and left soon after the outbreak of the war. He spent the next six years as a fighter pilot in the Fleet Air Arm and, when the war ended, he joined a London advertising agency intending to become an artist. He and the agency discovered he could write, and he spent the next thirty years as a copywriter and then as creative director. He ran his own consultancy and was retained by The Sunday Times to edit advertising features and was commissioned to redesign The Times. 











Happy memories of childhood holidays in Norfolk prompted him to buy a weekend cottage on the north coast, near Blakeney, and, bitten by the Norfolk bug, it was not long before he decided to stay there permanently with his wife Partridge. They have one daughter, Hilary, who was born in 1973.
 
Philip intended to write books but the pendulum of life swung back and he turned to painting instead. He held his first and very successful exhibition in 1977, encouraged by a great friend and Hilary's Godfather, Robin Combe. Philip's first exhibition at Holkham featured a watercolour of a small figure on the wide expanse of Holkham beach, titled 'H.M. Queen Elizabeth II'. This was bought by Lady Leicester and given to the Queen as a Jubilee present. Philip was thus launched on his career as a watercolour artist and subsequntly more paintings were to find their way into Royal collections. 
 
His work is evocative and impressionistic and many of his landscapes include a figure or two; a baitdigger thigh-booting his way across a muddy creek, children playing beach cricket, a wildfowler and his dog, or a family picnicking in the dunes. As well as the much loved Norfolk beaches and marshes, Philip painted poignant figure studies, London street scenes and sporting impressions of rugby, cricket and tennis players. 











 
There is an irony in the fact that advertising pointed him to writing when he thought he would paint, and then, when he thought he would write books, he turned himself back to his first love. But the years between have not been wasted; the singular quality of Gardner's work derives from his experience in advertising, the carefully nurtured ability to encapsulate a mood with the utmost economy and his titles, often full of wit, reflect an intellectual approach to his work. 
 
The trademark of Gardner's watercolours is the apparent simplicity of their construction. Painters will not be fooled by this; the essence of a good watercolour is said to be what is left out and Gardner understood this very well. His pictures are freely painted in a series of broad washes interrupted at carefully considered points in the composition by just sufficient detail to tell the story. It is this distillation, probably learned in advertising, which brings distinction to Gardner's work. This is further enhanced by his affection for his subject; Gardner said he was in love with Norfolk, and it shows.