Walter J. Phillips Quotes

Quotes about:

• A landscape painting in which composition is ignored is like a line taken from a poem at random: it lacks context, and may or may not make sense.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Taken, Landscape Painting, Lines

  3 Copy quote

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

  Walter J. Phillips

  Water, Elements, Tranquility

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Style, Degrees, Development

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Moving, Heart, Emotional

  4 Copy quote

• Beauty may be perceived in any scene by one with sympathy and understanding. Beauty is in the mind.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Beauty, Understanding, Mind

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Criticism, Sincere

  0 Copy quote

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

  Walter J. Phillips

  Vanity, Landscape, Said

  5 Copy quote

• It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Photography, Lenses, Instruments

  6 Copy quote

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

  Walter J. Phillips

  Reason, Pleasure, Good Things

  0 Copy quote

• 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

  Degrees, Enthusiasm, Impossible

  3 Copy quote

• Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Persistence, Concentration, Difficulty

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Design, Construction, Given

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Attitude, Grateful, Artist

  3 Copy quote

• It is often said that the modern exhibition has ruined painting. It is an unfortunate fact that it does encourage competition, so that, to attract attention to his work, an artist is tempted to descend to sensationalism, whether it is expressed by strong colour, grotesque handling, unusual subject, or sheer size.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Strong, Artist, Competition

  6 Copy quote

• The beauties of conception are always superior to those of expression.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Expression, Conception, Superiors

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Failure, Drawing, Use

  3 Copy quote

• While it is emotion that gives an impulse to the landscape painter, it is his style that inspires the critic's praise, and his subject that inveigles the untutored beholder.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Giving, Inspire, Style

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Interesting, Simplicity, Essentials

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Simplicity, Unity, Portraits

  3 Copy quote

• However exquisite the contours or the colours of clouds, trees, rivers or hills, may be in themselves, they must be sacrificed if they do not conform with the general plan.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Sacrifice, Clouds, Rivers

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Artist, Years, Interesting

  0 Copy quote

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

  Walter J. Phillips

  Painting, Pigment, Rhythm

  10 Copy quote

• The rewards of art are not always commensurate with its quality. It affords a precarious living.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Art, Quality, Rewards

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Integrity, Independence

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Anxiety, Finishing, Unnecessary

  3 Copy quote

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