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While sincerity and over-anxiety can spoil a picture, through superfluous elaboration and unnecessary correction, the carelessness that would leave it in an unfinished state is even more reprehensible.

Walter J. Phillips

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Walter J. Phillips
Age: 78 †
Born: 1884
Born: October 25
Died: 1963
Died: July 5
Painter
Wood Carver
Barton-upon-Humber
Lincolnshire
Walter Joseph Phillips
Walter Phillips
Phillips
State
Unfinished
States
Finishing
Even
Spoil
Elaboration
Would
Sincerity
Reprehensible
Unnecessary
Carelessness
Anxiety
Correction
Picture
Corrections
Leave
Superfluous

More quotes by Walter J. Phillips

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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
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In large studio paintings... composition, or arrangement, may be better studied, and nearer perfection, washes may be more suavely graded.
Walter J. Phillips
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Aerial perspective has nothing to do with line, but concerns tones and colours, by the delicate manipulation of which an artist can suggest infinite distance.
Walter J. Phillips
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Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence.
Walter J. Phillips
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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
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Beauty, pleasure, and the good things of life are intensified, and perhaps only exist, by reason of contrast.
Walter J. Phillips
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In painting, whether colour reflection is apparent or not, every hue must echo neighbouring hues, so that homogeneity may be attained.
Walter J. Phillips
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A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it.
Walter J. Phillips
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Some drawings are better than others... Some are utterly spoiled... I keep them all. I find a use sometimes even for the worst drawing... But their chief use is to mortify one's conceit, to show how thoroughly incompetent it is possible to be, and to shame one into better ways.
Walter J. Phillips
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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
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A painter may be an abandoned mimic at school he copies his teachers, which is only right, but he copies in turn every artist in town, which is not. He may do you that honour.
Walter J. Phillips
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Copying is an art in itself, demanding the greatest technical ability, especially in watercolour. However well done, the copy invariably lacks that nascent, ineffable, but definite quality, provided by the furious enthusiasm with which an original is created, an essential spontaneity that defies reproduction.
Walter J. Phillips
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Beauty may be perceived in any scene by one with sympathy and understanding. Beauty is in the mind.
Walter J. Phillips
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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
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The most interesting studio work, and perhaps the most practicable, is painting from pencil sketches and notes... It ensures the elimination of all facts but those essential to the effect.
Walter J. Phillips
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Tradition is a prop for social security.
Walter J. Phillips
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A beautiful feature in the colour wood-cut, and one unique in printing, is colour gradation... Two brushes are sometimes used, one charged with more potent colour than the other. Line blocks are nearly always printed with some variation of tone, and often in colour too.
Walter J. Phillips
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The impression of wood-grain... must be considered, not only as regards texture and visibility, but for the occasional possibility of the expression of form. A soft wood, with hard annulations, such as fir, prints very dearly.
Walter J. Phillips
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Luminosity is a quality dependent as much on technique as on the physical properties of individual pigments.
Walter J. Phillips
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The character of the subject must influence the choice of the method of its representation.
Walter J. Phillips