Tom Phillips was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma. His great grandfather Thomas Jefferson Phillips, who had some Native American blood, ventured to Oklahoma in the 1850s, married a Native American woman and became a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

By the age of nine, Phillips showed so much interest in drawing he was sent to the Helen Lorenze Art School in Oklahoma City. There, he studied the fundamentals of perspective, anatomy and drawing landscapes until he was 16. Since then, he has studied at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the Kansas City Art Institute.

Phillips also studied privately with David Kreitzer out of Mill Valley, California and Mark Anstending of San Franci...