Phil Ashcroft was born in Farnham, Surrey in 1970 and lives and works in south-east London. He completed a Post-Graduate Diploma in Illustration at St Martins and a BA Illustration at Harrow College of Art & Design.   Ashcroft was a Finalist in the John Moores Painting Prize 2014; the Celeste Art Prize 2007 and selected for Contemporary Art Society’s ARTfutures in 2007 and 2005. His work is held in The New Art Gallery Walsall’s permanent collection and in private collections worldwide.   His specific form of gestural, emotive abstraction combines flattened out 1980s style art deco and graffiti influences with references to American abstraction which often threaten to overwhelm the upper sections of his canvases.