Philip Vaughan

Philip Vaughan, is a member of the 2019 class of TEA Masters. He is an Artist/ Creative Designer and has been working for nearly 40 years in the themed entertainment industry and for several years before that working as a kinetic sculptor and teaching art in art schools in England. He is now retired from themed entertainment and works full time on Fine art projects including neon and kinetic works.

Philip built a 42 ft fiberglass sailboat in London and sailed that boat with his wife to Florida, where he learned of the work being done on EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland (TDL) at Walt Disney World. He started his themed entertainment career there. While working for WED at WDW he was exposed to the incredible organization that was required to design, produce and manage the construction of those two parks and to the amazing skills of the craftsmen who worked on the design and fabrication of many of those rides and attractions.

He started as a figure finisher, working mostly on dinosaurs, graduated to the position of field art director for EPCOT and was then sent to Japan to help get TDL finished. While he was there, he learned about the Asian market and visited China and fell in love with Asia in general. When WDI laid off a lot of its staff after the opening of TDL, Philip set up his own company as did many ex-WDI staff. Philip worked on the Korean World’s Fair, museum projects in the US and themed retail projects in Japan. His design firm Vertex Productions, in time became involved in projects all over the world, from Abu Dhabi, to Tunisia, to China, to India, developing a specialty for urban retail master planning as well as theme park design.

Recently Philip retired from the design business and transitioned to his first love, the studio arts of drawing, painting and sculpture. He remains actively involved in the design of large-scale public art projects, many of them kinetic and involving light as a medium. He works in the studio every day, shows actively and tries to help others starting in the business.