Walter J. Phillips – Setting The Scene

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Walter J. Phillips RCA (1884-1963), "Morning," 1924

colour woodblock / goyu paper.Courtesy of Willock & Sax Gallery

Walter J. Phillips – Setting The Scene – an exhibition of block prints.

The work of Walter J. Phillips embodies local landscapes and human activities in those landscapes using a vocabulary forged in Japanese woodcut processes. Good art is rooted in the particular and Phillips’ unequivocal way of seeing provides evidence of his enduring attention to place and his self-conscious awareness of the art of past times.  The diverse content of people and scenery in the works of this exhibition provide a perspective on the artist’s range of interests within the context of his natural and human worlds. He sets the scene with his observations and offers glimpses of this milieu through the use of light and color.   

Walter J. Phillips was internationally acclaimed during his lifetime for his proficiency in the medium of the colour woodcut derived from the Japanese method. Through the skilful superimposition of many layers of transparent water-based inks, he created images of great beauty, subtlety, and depth. 

Walter Phillips was born 1884 at Barton-on-Humber in Lincolnshire, England, the son of Reverend John Phillips, a Methodist minister. In his teens, he attended the Birmingham School of Art once a week, studying under Edward R. Taylor. He went to South Africa for a few years in the hope of earning enough money there to be able to study art in Paris, but returned with little more than he left with. By 1908 he had worked as a commercial artist in Manchester and London, then from 1908 to 1911 served as art master at Bishop Woodworth School in Salisbury, England. In 1911, he held his first solo show in Salisbury which was both critically and financially successful. Eventually, he and his wife Gladys Pitcher, whom he had married in December 1910, decided to emigrate to Canada, arriving in Winnipeg in June, 1913. Shortly after his arrival, a fellow artist he met taught him etching technique and sold him his tools.