Walter J. Phillips Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

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

Walter J. Phillips
Do not think me fussy when I specify tidiness. It is essential... In printing, remember that cleanliness and order wait upon success.

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 the ears of the chosen few, and create for them visions of aethereal beauty? Do landscape painters of genius walk the plains of Heaven? Or is it only vanity that urges him to paint?

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
When spring is here the sketcher begins to look over his equipment and relishes in anticipation the soothing hours he will spend in the open, warmed by the sun, fanned by the breeze, charmed by the manifold delights of nature.

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

Walter J. Phillips
It is the incompetent and the neglected artist who charges the public with ignorance, stupidity, and indifference. He raves loudly, but he is incomprehensible, even inarticulate, in his work.

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

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 satisfied with his labour.

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

Walter J. Phillips
Since art exists for humanity it is not unreasonable to assume that humanity has some rights in the matter. Who pays the piper calls the tune. An artist cannot be at once a rebel and a comfortable citizen.

Walter J. Phillips
Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence.

Walter J. Phillips
The student's ambition should be to become a painter's painter, rather than a popular painter. The approbation of fellow artists based on sympathy and understanding is manifestly better than the fickle or fast homage of the greater public.

Walter J. Phillips
Annoyance arises from the feared implication that we are copyists in subject or treatment, or both, whereas the common qualities that establish the relationship result merely from a similarity of method.

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 was never so easy, literature on art never so profuse, and works of art never so widely distributed, a real passion for pictures is encountered but rarely.

Walter J. Phillips
Many cherish the idea that a photograph is an exact presentment of nature, and accept without question the paradox that a photograph cannot lie. Actually there never was a more unmitigated liar.

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 and thought given to its construction.

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

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

Walter J. Phillips
Pseudo-critics prefer to direct their remarks to the artist - Heaven forgive them - but one due rather to a common impression that such an attitude is the correct one, that all paintings should be figuratively mutilated, and that all artists are fair game, or really grateful perhaps for a few tips.

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

Walter J. Phillips
The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied.

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 at sunset, or the golden suffusions of autumn.

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. We are not concerned with what effects cannot be produced with our materials.

Walter J. Phillips
Appreciation is the breath of life to the creative artist, and in spite of modern conditions, there is enough abroad to sustain him. But his name is now legion; he competes with the dead as well as the living; and the rewards and honours seem attenuated by division.

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

Walter J. Phillips