Bio

Phil Uhl — Artist bio For more than five decades, multimedia artist Phil Uhl has created distinctive images focused primarily on sailing and the sea. Born in Toledo, Ohio, he grew up on the shores of Lake Erie in southern Michigan. He began painting at age seven and started sailing as a teenager. After serving as a VISTA volunteer in Milwaukee, Phil moved to Hawaii in the early 1970s. He sold his paintings on the street until he convinced Pan American Airways to hire him in 1978 as an unpaid consultant. He provided graphic-design services and traveled to major yachting centers worldwide, giving multimedia presentations of his sailing photographs from the new Pan Am Clipper Cup Series in Hawaii to attract the world’s best sailors to the event. By the mid-1980s, Uhl had become one of the leading international sailing photographers, with images regularly appearing on covers and in the pages of the world’s top sailing publications. In 1985 he was chosen by the Sail America Foundation to work with Dennis Conner and the Sail America team to document their successful challenge to win back the America’s Cup, which Australia had captured in 1983. Uhl expanded into professional video coverage in 1984, when he and his San Francisco–based partner, Leslie DeMeuse, started CSTV (Channel Sea Television). CSTV produced worldwide television coverage of Hawaii’s Kenwood Cup Series after the Kenwood Corporation took over sponsorship of the Clipper Cup from Pan Am, and they also provided TV coverage of the biennial Transpac Race until 2007. In 1991 Uhl served as director of television coverage for Bill Koch and the America3 Foundation’s winning 1992 America’s Cup team. In 1995, in the same role, he produced footage seen by millions during America3’s history-making America’s Cup campaign with the first women’s team to compete in the Cup. For the 2000 America’s Cup in Auckland, Uhl co-produced a series of programs that aired on New Zealand television during the event. In 2012 Phil’s entire America’s Cup archive (the Uhl Collection) became part of the William I. Koch America’s Collection, the largest archive of America’s Cup images and artifacts in the world. Footage from his collection has been used in numerous documentaries, including "Rocking the Boat" (Lifetime), "Buddy Melges: The Wizard of Zenda" (Quicklier Film Partners) released in 2023, and the upcoming "Mighty Mary" (50Eggs), scheduled for theatrical release in fall 2026. In 2006 Roy E. Disney asked Phil to serve as coordinating producer for the movie "Morning Light", released by the Walt Disney Company in 2008. While primarily self-taught, Uhl studied graphic design at the Dayton Art Institute and printmaking at the Art Students League in New York City. He has received numerous awards in fine art, photography, design, and video, including an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. His photographs, original prints, video programs, and paintings have been shown in numerous exhibitions, including a solo exhibition in Tokyo in 2018 and major events at the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii State Art Museum, Mystic Seaport Museum , the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.