Guy Stanley Philoche

Philoche plans to bring as many artists from the collection to the public as possible, and in June 2021, hosted the first public exhibition featuring works from the collection at the Virgil Catherine Gallery in Chicago, IL.

In 2020, Philoche joined a group of Harlem artists in creating a two-block Black Lives Matter mural across Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in honour of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. In the mural, Philoche represented the "I" and the "V" in "Lives" with the I showing the four badge numbers of the Minneapolis police officers involved, and the V simply showing "8:46", representing the 8 minutes and 46 seconds it was initially believed that Derek Chauvin had knelt on Floyd's neck. Taking part in producing the mural had a major impact on Philoche, he said of it,

Also, in 2020, as a result of the MeToo Movement, Philoche was able to exhibit his No Comment Series, with the formerly-controversial series now being called "ahead of its time" by many of the galleries that had earlier rejected it.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020, Philoche expanded his efforts by supporting struggling artists including those without any sales history. Half of the artists from whom he purchased were New York-based and known to Philoche. However, he has also solicited purchases from artists as far away as London and Australia. Known as The Philoche Collection, Philoche assembled a diverse array of works which adorn the walls of his small New York apartment.

In 2019, Philoche debuted his Come Fly With Me series. This series again invokes the nostalgia of Philoche’s childhood with images of dollar bills folded into butterflies and airplanes in reference to a memory of Philoche’s father giving the artist a wallet with a lucky $2 bill. The scenes in these paintings included $100 bills as paper airplanes, with the intention of removing the currency from its value-based context against backgrounds meant to evoke aged New York City walls.

When he first arrived in New York, Philoche faced difficulty standing out among the city's many artists. Philoche went from gallery to gallery, leaving his business card under doors and soliciting galleries to take a chance on his work, in addition to sneaking into events in order to meet potential clients. By 2016, however, Philoche had established himself in the New York art scene as a known and respected artist.

Philoche began his signature style of nostalgic works with his Freedom series in Spring 2016. These paintings combined the distressed, vintage appearance of Philoche’s Games Series with the paper airplanes and colour fields of his later works. The paper airplanes, which Philoche tossed out windows as a child, are a recurring theme in his work.

In 2012, Philoche created his ‘’No Comment Series’’, a series of female nude paintings focusing on sexual violence against women as well as domestic abuse and sexism in the workplace and everyday society. Philoche offered the series to galleries throughout New York, but each gallery deemed the subject too controversial to show.

Around 2000, Philoche relocated from Connecticut to New York City with the contents of a backpack as his only possessions. Philoche still lives and works in the City today. It was in New York that Philoche's career as a professional artist began.

Guy Stanley Philoche (/ɡaɪ ˈstænli fɪloʊʃ/; French pronunciation: ​[ɡi stanlɛ filɔʃ]) (born 1977) is a Haitian-American abstract realist artist known for his colourful, richly-textured paintings often blending themes and images of New York City and the Caribbean while also incorporating elements of nostalgia through use of cartoon and comic characters. Born in Haiti, Philoche has spent most of his life in the United States, at first in Connecticut and later on in New York City, his present home. In 2020, Philoche came to national attention when his efforts to provide assistance and support for struggling artists were highlighted in news sources throughout the United States.

Guy Stanley Philoche was born in Haiti in 1977. In 1980, when he was three years old, his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Connecticut. When Philoche's family first arrived in the United States, the family faced extreme poverty, and Guy himself found it difficult to adjust to a new country and a new language. Guy spoke French, and he learned English through watching cartoons and reading comics. Despite these difficulties, Philoche's childhood was happy. His fond memories of the board games he and his family played every Sunday after dinner were the inspiration for an entire series of Philoche's paintings, entitled the Game Series. His first drawings were of Disney characters, whom he still reproduces in his paintings. All of these childhood experiences were a major influence on Philoche's life and art.