Who Is Philip Edward King?
Clickbait titles are a dime a dozen, so I won’t leave you hanging for an answer… Philip Edward King is me! But what’s in a name? A breakdown of the etymology of each of my names might suffice, but falls short of painting a full picture.
Plus, everyone knows the perennial adage about pictures & words, so if you ask me, ekphrastic writing about the breadth of anyone’s humanity is kind of a fool’s errand: the more you detail, the more you’ll need to expand on it. On that note, this intro will be far from comprehensive…
But I figured a summary of my interests, experiences, and goals would be a fitting topic for my first story on Medium! If you like, visit my website’s bio page for the bullet points and links to the rest of my portfolio.
Interests
Nothing spurs my creative drive. I mean, the concept of nothingness really inspires me! One thing that I find challenging about working with this conceptual ground is how, in fact, as soon as we name nothingness or try to envision it, we fall short of understanding its essence.
To this end, I eschew minimalism, and seek instead to build rich fantasy worlds replete with variation, multiplicity, and texture. Religion, spirituality, and mythology pique my interest (and often take the forefront in my world-building). I have a complicated history with these things, but overall, they lend a sense of deeper meaning to the ambiguity of everyday life in the 21st-century Western world.
As a dedicated lifelong learner, fitting neatly into any one creative box feels counterintuitive and counterproductive. Basically, I’m a multi-hyphenate, trans*disciplinary, creative seeker!
My early years as an artist, before I really self-identified as such, were defined by drawing (inspired by a lot of anime), creative writing, and an uphill battle with digital painting.
At 18, I enrolled in Portland State University to pursue studies for a Bachelor of Fine Arts — mainly I studied painting and comics. A couple years into school, I started to take courses for a Minor in Writing. I did a lot of nonfiction writing, began to develop a comic/graphic novel, and delved deeper into poetry (something that had always offered me an outlet). I also began to study editing more intently, as it was something I’d always been drawn to and did casually for friends and peers. Following graduation, and a difficult adjustment to civilian life, I spent an increasing amount of time among performance artists, musicians, and drag artists.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, I’ve really plunged into learning music production with Fruity Loops Studio, primarily making vaporwave and other experimental electronic music. I have also further developed my comic, Where the Fuck Is Boston, Oregon?!, which I started in earnest in 2018, as well as created my own drag persona, Gazelle Massage!
Experiences
PSU tested my limits. The hectic pace and demands of my university studies had a hugely negative effect on my physical and mental health, and I nearly dropped out of school four or five times. During my junior year, my father died from cancer, and this marked a huge turning point in my personal (and professional) life.
As 2015 began, I accepted a position on the school’s literary arts publication, Pathos Magazine, as a copy editor. Prior to this, I’d been a volunteer reader, responsible for little more than voting on submissions. By the end of the year, I’d been selected, at the nomination of my boss and an interview panel of PSU administrators, to don the mantle of Editor-in-Chief for the following school year.
After studying abroad in Rome during the summer of 2015, and beginning my BFA studio program that fall, I felt a renewed creative spark, and pushed myself to study more critical theory (something I truly believe everyone should do, especially when they disagree with a theorist’s views), and incorporate it into my work. I was introduced to Yoko Ono’s conceptual art the year prior, and found a fascination with modern artists from the 1960’s through to the 1990’s, particularly LGBTQ+ and feminist artists.
During this same time period, I began connecting more with my family’s Sámi heritage, learning more about indigenous peoples’ struggles against various colonial powers around the globe, and trying to incorporate more anti-colonial ethics and perspectives into my work. The 2016 U.S. presidential election solidified this commitment, further strengthened by the disparities exacerbated following COVID-19’s spread around Earth.
My practice frequently leads me into involvement in direct action and mutual aid, as I write about liberation, marginalization, and act as a connective tissue for various organizers in my bubble — though I don’t really believe in bubbles, particularly not during our time of widespread Internet access. Instagram, despite its flaws as a limb of a mega-corporation, is a significant platform for grassroots community organizing and spreading information about indigenous anarchism and anti-racism, and I use captions as a space for lyric essays, and diaristic & prosaic poetry.
Goals
The idea of a 5-year plan, or even a 6-month plan, has never really spoken to me. I have general goalposts that I strive for, but they’re more like bullet points, without a time limit, than they are a hard-and-fast to-do list. My wishlist for my future reads as follows:
- Acquire a book deal with a major publisher, to release a series of fantasy/sci-fi novels, titled The Shattered Bloodstone, about a world-weary soldier born into a centuries-old conflict between a shadowy death cult and a sect of zealots, each bent on destruction — and while she disagrees with their many means, she comes to find, after unlikely alliances with enemies, and adversarial encounters with friends & family, that she doesn’t entirely disagree with either faction’s ends.
- Self-publish Where the Fuck Is Boston, Oregon?! — a comic series about punks, queerdoes, faeries, and outcasts battling a cabal seeking to kickstart the Apocalypse, masquerading as a network of corporations, in a fictionalized Portland, Oregon where magic is real, and the coin toss that gave the city its current name landed on the other face. I started to upload pages to my website in June 2020, and while I’ve taken a couple of hiatuses (for various reasons), I’m now 30-something pages into the series, and I’ll start a Kickstarter project soon to produce a trade paperback Volume I.
- Finish illustrating a tarot deck, titled The Human/Animal Tarot. My BFA thesis project centered around creating the Major Arcana for this deck, and I’ve completed several more Minor Arcana cards in the last few years. Inspired by Carl Jung’s writings on dreams and archetypes, Gustave Dore’s illustrations for Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, indigenous sovereignty movements, animism, and posthumanist theory & philosophy, this deck is extremely unique. Peep the progress on my website! More updates coming soon, folks!!!
- So much more! More poetry, an anime about yokai-fighting trans skater girls, a one-person dramedy show titled “N8R B0I”, a gay romance novel(la?) about a young man named Thierry Trudeaux as he grows up during the 1950’s and 60’s and lives through the AIDS Crisis, and perhaps even some nonfiction about Sámi noaidi, events from my own life, and more that I haven’t conceived of yet.
- Ultimately I want to live a life that exceeds my most dazzling dreams and loftiest ambitions, because there’s so much Earth to see, and only one lifetime in which Philip Edward King can see it.
Thanks for reading. Hope you’ll stick around for the rest of the show!
