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Be content with nothing less than perfection.

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
Content
Perfection
Less
Nothing

More quotes by Walter J. Phillips

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In most natural scenes there is a prevailing colour, which the landscape painter must learn to identify, and which must prevail also in a slightly exaggerated form, in his painting, for the sake of truth, harmony and unity.
Walter J. Phillips
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When technique is obtrusive it becomes mere mannerism, a conscious striving for effect. It is only a means to an end - the manner of putting paint to paper. It hardly embraces the expressive side of painting.
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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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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Humility counts for much, but it may be that vanity does not dispossess that admirable quality.
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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A landscape painting is essentially emotional in origin. It exists as a record of an effect in nature whose splendour has moved a human heart, and according as it is well or ill done it moves the hearts of others.
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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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
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There must be a judicious arrangement of all the parts. Considered conversely, the artist's task is to fill his panel with a design that conforms to its shape and is beautiful in itself.
Walter J. Phillips
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Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence.
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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Style is instinctive and few achieve it in a notable degree. Its development is not hastened by instruction. It comes or it doesn't. It will take care of itself.
Walter J. Phillips
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I don't like to think that I am a slave to technique, or so inept that I have to restrict myself to one method.
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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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
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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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Every successful painter has worked hard. He cannot rest after having gained a certain degree of facility in drawing, and expect to retain it. He must advance or fall behind. Without practice he will forget his eye will fail him and his hand will deny its master.
Walter J. Phillips
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Many of the old masters of watercolour painted from notes, with enthusiasm either unabated or renewed. It is hard to assume the same degree of concentration in the studio, but not impossible.
Walter J. Phillips