Phil Knoll wants his art to be fun. Fun to make, fun to look at, fun to think about. This is not a modest ambition — it is a radical one, and Knoll pursues it with the seriousness that only someone with something real to say can sustain. The fun is the delivery system. What it delivers is a sustained interrogation of human arrogance — the hubris of Homo Sapiens rendered in watercolor, graphite, ink, and color pencil with a hand that is by turns meticulous and loose, reverential and completely irreverent. Animals appear with the dignity humans deny them. Mythological figures are transposed into the present with uncomfortable ease. Grids of repeated images accumulate into something between pattern and indictment. The titles alone — My Favorite Bible Story, Nice Things Happen to Good People, Watching a Stranger Die — tell you exactly what kind of intelligence is at work here. Knoll's drawings are included in the Rothschild Contemporary Drawing Collection at the Museum of Modern Art. His work has been exhibited at the Palo Alto Museum of Art, the deCordova Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Danforth Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, among others. He is represented by Bernay Fine Arts and LABspace. He lives and works in the Berkshires.