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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

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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
Since
Assume
Pipers
Rights
Calls
Piper
Artist
Assuming
Unreasonable
Art
Exists
Pays
Cannot
Citizens
Tune
Matter
Pay
Rebel
Comfortable
Tunes
Humanity
Citizen

More quotes by Walter J. Phillips

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Tradition is a prop for social security.
Walter J. Phillips
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The importance of colour is as nothing compared with that of form, chiaroscuro and arrangement. They are the true and enduring bases of pictorial art.
Walter J. Phillips
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It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.
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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The beauties of conception are always superior to those of expression.
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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The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius.
Walter J. Phillips
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Perhaps the ideal life is that of the week-end artist, who preserves the integrity of his own aesthetic ideals because of his economic independence... If his daily grind is hateful he has his weekly solace in art.
Walter J. Phillips
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The painter who is so enamoured by the beauties of the parts of a landscape, that he strives to represent all, cannot succeed. His picture will be an arrangement of a series of portraits of things without unity... There must be variety and contrast, but in measured doses.
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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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
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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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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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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
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Humility counts for much, but it may be that vanity does not dispossess that admirable quality.
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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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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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
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The portrait painter... If he insults his sitters his occupation is gone. Whether he paints the should instead of the features, or the latter with all its natural blemishes, he is as presumptuous as if he shouted, 'What a face. Hide it.' which would never do, although it is analogous to what landscape painters are doing every day.
Walter J. Phillips
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Etching will suggest subtle variations of tone, the most delicate shadings, all with black lines, which, as far as lines go, are unsurpassed for sheer beauty.
Walter J. Phillips