Walter J. Phillips

The play of sunlight is amusement enough for a lazy man...

— Walter J. Phillips

Be content with nothing less than perfection.

— Walter J. Phillips

Tradition is a prop for social security.

— Walter J. Phillips

Subject has the variety of life.

— Walter J. Phillips

Beauty may be perceived in any scene by one with sympathy and understanding. Beauty is in the mind.

— Walter J. Phillips

Realism is condemned by those artists whose poverty of technique does not permit them to express it.

— Walter J. Phillips

Luminosity is a quality dependent as much on technique as on the physical properties of individual pigments.

— Walter J. Phillips

The beauty and wonders of nature are as alluring as the pursuit of Art, and made of me a landscape painter.

— Walter J. Phillips

For an intelligent estimate of your technique go to another artist working in the same medium.

— Walter J. Phillips

A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it.

— Walter J. Phillips

Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence.

— Walter J. Phillips

Colour is as variable and evanescent in the form of pigment as in visible nature.

— Walter J. Phillips

However exquisite the contours or the colours of clouds, trees, rivers or hills, may be in themselves, they must be sacrificed if…

— Walter J. Phillips

Any subject is suitable provided it is of sufficient interest, but the design must be very carefully considered, and plenty of time…

— Walter J. Phillips

It is the sense of unfamiliar envelopment that is impressive, whether in the living grays of hoarfrost, the crimson of the heavens…

— Walter J. Phillips

Let it not be assumed that the artist is so smug as to dislike true criticism. No sincere artist was ever completely…

— Walter J. Phillips

Watercolour painting is notoriously difficult - so much depends on directness and speed, and certainty of intention. Tentative or fumbling touches are…

— Walter J. Phillips

In most natural scenes there is a prevailing colour, which the landscape painter must learn to identify, and which must prevail also…

— Walter J. Phillips

Artists are perennially implored to consider 'the limitations of the medium.' Whoever invented this expression exaggerated the limitations of the English language.…

— Walter J. Phillips

When technique is obtrusive it becomes mere mannerism, a conscious striving for effect. It is only a means to an end -…

— Walter J. Phillips

A beautiful feature in the colour wood-cut, and one unique in printing, is colour gradation... Two brushes are sometimes used, one charged…

— Walter J. Phillips

The painter who is so enamoured by the beauties of the parts of a landscape, that he strives to represent all, cannot…

— Walter J. Phillips

Every successful painter has worked hard. He cannot rest after having gained a certain degree of facility in drawing, and expect to…

— Walter J. Phillips

Some drawings are better than others... Some are utterly spoiled... I keep them all. I find a use sometimes even for the…

— Walter J. Phillips

Pseudo-critics prefer to direct their remarks to the artist - Heaven forgive them - but one due rather to a common impression…

— Walter J. Phillips

Universal appreciation of art... belongs to those countries and those ages which are not, or were not, ruled by materialism. Though travel…

— Walter J. Phillips

Is the artist impelled by spiritual forces, by the divine afflatus, by conscious or unconscious emulation of others? Do angles whisper in…

— Walter J. Phillips

Many rules for the creation of colour schemes have been published in recent years, but, while they are popular in commercial studies,…

— Walter J. Phillips

The character of the subject must influence the choice of the method of its representation.

— Walter J. Phillips

Rhythm is as necessary in a picture as pigment; it is as much a part of painting as of music.

— Walter J. Phillips

It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.

— Walter J. Phillips

The rewards of art are not always commensurate with its quality. It affords a precarious living.

— Walter J. Phillips

I don't like to think that I am a slave to technique, or so inept that I have to restrict myself to…

— Walter J. Phillips

The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence.

— Walter J. Phillips

Drawing is the representation of form - the graphic expression of a visual experience.

— Walter J. Phillips

Many a painter has lived in affluence, in high esteem, who lacked the divine spark, and who is utterly forgotten to-day.

— Walter J. Phillips

Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.

— Walter J. Phillips

Humility counts for much, but it may be that vanity does not dispossess that admirable quality.

— Walter J. Phillips

The syllogism art for art's sake refers to that kind of painting which disregards, or is contrary to, public taste.

— Walter J. Phillips

Beauty, pleasure, and the good things of life are intensified, and perhaps only exist, by reason of contrast.

— Walter J. Phillips