Runnin’ Scared
Painted Into a Corner Over a $576-a-Month Chelsea Apartment
Fire hazard? Philip Sherrod is a triple threat to the senses.
By Maria Luisa Tucker
When Philip Sherrod mentions at regular intervals that he is “the most prolific painter of any century,” you assume it’s an exaggeration. That is, until you walk into his apartment.
The spacious fourth-floor flat on West 24th Street is a dizzying tangle of colorful faces and bodies. Bold portraits and streetscapes are nailed to the ceiling and doors and stacked 10 feet deep against the walls. In 48 years of living in the apartment, Sherrod estimates that he has accumulated a collection numbering some 5,000 of his own paintings. The walk through successively smaller doorways that lead to the back room—where hundreds more oil-painted faces peer at one another—gives you the feeling that you’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. Even the toilet seat is painted with stripes and red hearts.
It’s a fitting abode for Sherrod, the 72-year-old founder of an alliance of artists called the Street Painters and a teacher at both the Art Students League and the National Academy School of Fine Arts. But to the city government—and Sherrod’s landlord—all that canvas and paint adds up to a fire hazard.