66 Quotes by Walter J. Phillips

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.

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.

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.

Luminosity is a quality dependent as much on technique as on the physical properties of individual pigments.

A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it.

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

Humility counts for much, but it may be that vanity does not dispossess that admirable quality.

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.

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.