Known as the intellectual and artistic leader of the California watercolor artists, Phil Dike was strongly influenced by avant garde painters Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, and Charles Burchfield. Born in Redlands, California Dike began his art education at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1924, later continuing at the Art Students League in New York with Frank DuMond and George Luks. He traveled throughout Europe and studied for a year in France at the American Academy of Fontainebleau and exhibited at that time at the Paris Salon.

Dike returned to Los Angeles where he taught at Chouinard's for twenty years and also worked in the fine art department of Walt Disney Studios where he worked on animated classics including "Fantasia" and "Snow White" and was the first artist to put color into Disney animations. From 1950 to 1971, he was an esteemed member of the faculty of Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School.

Phil Dike's work can be found at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio and the Pasadena Art Institute in California.