Quote

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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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
Actually
Paradox
Idea
Cherish
Nature
Photograph
Cannot
Photography
Ideas
Accept
Unmitigated
Without
Accepting
Liar
Many
Question
Liars
Never
Lying
Exact

More quotes by 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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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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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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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
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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
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A horizontal or vertical line lacks energy, compared with one that deviates from either. The difference between these graphic expressions is the difference between movement and repose.
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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Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.
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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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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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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Drawing is the representation of form - the graphic expression of a visual experience.
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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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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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
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Many rules for the creation of colour schemes have been published in recent years, but, while they are popular in commercial studies, I know of no creative artist who employs them. They are, per se, restrictive their use precludes any chance of adventuring in this interesting field.
Walter J. Phillips
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Colour is as variable and evanescent in the form of pigment as in visible nature.
Walter J. Phillips
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Watercolour painting is notoriously difficult - so much depends on directness and speed, and certainty of intention. Tentative or fumbling touches are disastrous, for they cannot be obliterated easily.
Walter J. Phillips
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The sincere artist is usually his own best critic, but continuous and prolonged work on one painting will sometimes dull his judgment... The critic is in demand, but he must be competent.
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