Philip Jay Carey

December 31, 1942—February 3, 2022

Artist, musician, and adventurer Philip Carey passed away peacefully in February 2022 after a brief illness. He loved life and packed as much living and observing and creating as humanly possible into his 79 years, turning nature, dreams, medical challenges, and even everyday trash into raw material for his art, and documenting his dialysis, kidney transplant, and even the isolation and frustration of the pandemic through drawings, mail art, collages, and sculptures.

Philip Jay Carey was born in Long Beach, California, to Philip A. and Elizabeth Carey. He attended Millikan High School and Long Beach State College, and performed at Knott’s Berry Farm’s Birdcage Theater, where he worked with his friend the young comic Steve Martin and met his future wife Judith Morgan Carey (who passed away in 2000). Over his career he spent time with the choral group the Gregg Smith Singers (where he recorded with Stravinsky & won a Grammy), the U.S. Navy (where he typed & designed the ship newsletter), the California Museum of Science & Industry, the Roberson Center museum in Binghamton, New York, and the California State Parks Department (where he designed beautiful exhibits at places like Big Basin and the Marshall Gold Discovery park), before reinventing himself once again in retirement as a full-time artist (and avid succulent gardener) in his adopted hometown of Morro Bay, California.

Philip’s artwork has appeared at galleries and museums including the United States Postal Museum, the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore Maryland), the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Deer Run Art and Artifacts (Cambria, California), the Art Reach Gallery (Mt. Pleasant, Michigan), Illinois Central College Art Museum, Art Center Morro Bay, and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago, Illinois). He published three books of dream drawings, as well as a book of envelope art which he created during five years of dialysis treatments prior to receiving a kidney transplant in 2015. His sculpture “Art in My Veins” was featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He fought the isolation of the covid-19 pandemic by sending questionnaires to dozens of friends and family, soliciting artwork, thoughts, and stories, and compiling the answers into newsletters that helped maintain connections in what was for many a lonely time. He continued to produce art, including his Pandemic Envelope series and his “Self-Portrait in Pandemic Times,” a collage created entirely out of the packaging of groceries he had delivered during the long months when shopping in person was impossible.

Philip is survived by his children Ian and Heather, his brother Steve (their brother Stanton passed away in 2021), his partner Linda Ferreira, and a lifetime’s worth of friends and admirers of his art, music, and love of living. Memorial donations may be made to the California Pacific Medical Center Foundation, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, the ACLU, Swing Left, and the Alzheimer's Foundation of America.

Philip’s artwork and legacy will continue to be celebrated with updates to this website, as well as on Instagram and Facebook.