Day, a lineal descendant of Wong Ah Sat, was born in Goulburn, New South Wales, living in the same house for his entire childhood and adolescent years.
[4] There his drawings were shown alongside those of Davida Allen, Rick Amor, Guo Jian, Euan Macleod, John Olsen, Gloria Petyarre, and Harry Wedge, among others.
The exhibition catalogue states: "[Day] looks at things for himself … This is a rare quality, particularly when so many practitioners in the visual arts claim to be bored with image-making and, as a substitute, flirt with ideas.
His pictures invite the viewer into a one-on-one relationship with common things, this includes domestic objects, urban animals, garden plants, and the occasional portrait.
"[7] From 2004 onward, Day has almost exclusively created images for artist's books, often in collaboration with Australian authors, including: Cassandra Atherton, Gary Catalano, Julian Davies, James Grieve, and Robin Wallace-Crabbe.
[8] A brief biographical note states: Phil Day has enjoyed illustrating other people's writing, then binding the results into books, since he was sixteen.
They are: Burly Gryphon (1997), Hungry Magpies (1997), Bomber (1997), Fth (1998), The Last Lost Doughnut (1998), Formingle (1998), Household: Eleven Poems (1998), A Pile of Hair (2003), Top Ten Twentieth Century Monsters (2003), Through Hoops (2005), Familiar Objects (2005), Goodbye Eggcup (2006), Cat's Eye (2008), I’ll Build A Stairway To Paradise (2008), Day By Day (2009), Four Men and Their Ideas on the Erotic.
"[12][13] As of 2017, Day began collaborating with lithographer Adrian Kellett (of Sunshine Editions); artist and intaglio printer Greg Harrison; and designer binder Suzanne Schmollgruber (of Centro del bel libro Ascona, Switzerland).
[16] Scott McCulloch, Australian Book Review, commented: "Spontaneous in his approach, Day utilizes various bits of visual information: tables, lists, Shakespeare quotes, typography that verges on concrete poetry … it sounds messy, but the connection and slippages of these digression make for an intoxicating and dissonant piece of prose.
Fiona Capp (Sydney Morning Herald) comments: "In the spirit of the absurdist and playful logic that characterises the Alice books, A Chink in a Daisy-Chain takes us into the rabbit warren of Day's mind as he free associates, one thought leading to another in a stream of consciousness ..."[19] Similar to his artist's books, included in Chink in a Daisy-Chain is a drawing by Day illustrating The Wasp in a Wig – the suppressed chapter from Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
[citation needed] I995, while still a student, Day held his first solo exhibition displaying his illustrations for François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Dorothy Johnston, Sydney Morning Herald, observed: His line drawings enhance the mood of each scene, lightening it, sending up characters locked in earnest or self-serving conversation, or hopelessly in love; at other times giving a darker, sinister flavour to events ... revellers disguised as politicians, celebrities and cartoon animals tumble over one another right out of the frame.
'[25] 2018, Day was invited to compete at Meow Wolf's Score Wars: Galaga World Championship, Santa Fe, New Mexixo, USA.