Wood Engravings and Colour Woodcuts

(At 1010 Broad)

Opening: Saturday February 20, 2010;  2:00-4:00 p.m.
Last day of exhibition: Wednesday April 3, 2010

Walter J. Phillips (1884-1963) became an art teacher and the most famous woodcut artist which Canada has produced.  He also wrote articles, a column and a technical book; he played the piano, excelled at bridge and was an amateur naturalist. His engagement as a family-man and his enthusiasm for nature inform the imagery of his art.

Phillips' pictorial, naturalistic and aesthetic approach is traceable in part to 19th century English watercolour painting.  His mastery of composition recalls, for instance David Cox whose watercolours Phillips, even as a teen­ager, had studied.  They make clear that, to advantage, 'unnecessary details could be eliminated, the vantage point shifted, and integral elements changed to suit the artist's sense of harmony and balance.' (Nicholas Tuele: 'W.J. Phillips Centenary Exhibition' AGGV, October 1984) Key also for Phillips were Japanese ukiyoe prints and art nouveau.

Phillips was born in Barton on Humber, a Lincolnshire Port town. After boarding school during which he took part-time studies at the Birmingham School of Art, he was an assistant teacher of Latin and mathematics for a year.  From age 18 to 23 he worked at various jobs in South Africa.  On returning to England he was a commercial artist for a year (1908), freelanced briefly and then, for four years, taught art at a school in Salisbury.  During time off he often painted with Royal Academy trained artist Ernest Caros.

In June 1913, Phillips, his wife Gladys and son John emigrated to Winnipeg.  Phillips taught art at St. John Technical High School there from 1913 to 1926 with the exception of ten months in 1924-25 when he, Gladys and their now five children lived in England.  By the end of 1914, under the tutelage of Cyril Barraud, Phillips had developed much skill in the medium of etching, of which there are, altogether, 30 known editions by Phillips - these variously dating from c1914 to c1917.  He wanted, however, to explore colour more, and in 1917 he made his first colour woodcut. In England he studied with colour print makers Allen Seaby, Yoshijiro Urushibara, Sydney Lee and Martin Hardie, and worked on a manuscipt which in 1926 was published as The Technique of the Colour Woodcut, a book which brought him international recognition.  In 1926 he visited the Rockies for the first time.

Phillips' first visit to the West Coast was in 1927.  He stayed with his sister Edith (Edi) and her husband Bob Sharpe.  Edith taught school at Alert Bay. Bob Sharpe owned a fishing boat and took his brother-in-law to outlying villages such as Karlukwees on adjacent Village Island and - in that year or soon thereafter - to Mamalilicoola on the mainland.  Phillips also produced 'Ten Canadian Colour Prints,' the first of five multiple-print portfolios.  1929 was the last summer that the Phillipses spent at Keewatin, Lake of the Woods, Ontario.

In 1941 Phillips moved to Calgary where he taught until 1949 at the Institute of Technology and Art.  He moved, however, to Banff in 1948.  He had taught, from 1940, at the Banff Summer School and he continued on its faculty until 1960 when he retired to Oak Bay, Victoria, where he died.

Phillips' invocations of the natural world and of everyday- often family- life have endeared this artist's work to legions of viewers.