PERMANENT COLLECTION

WALTER JOSEPH PHILLIPS

NATIONALITY: British / Canadian

DATES: 1884 - 1963

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Phillips was born in England, and moved with his family to Canada in 1913, settling in Winnipeg. From 1914 to 1923, the family spent their summers at Lake of the Woods, and the experiences that Phillips had there grounded his sense of belonging to his new home. In time, he would create works of quiet subtlety and serenity capturing the unique topography of the region and its shifting moods, gracefully combining the graphic languages of Japanese printmaking and the British Art and Crafts style.

Phillips left Winnipeg for Banff in 1940. For the next twenty years he taught at the Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary and at the Banff School of Fine Arts, where he was instrumental in the founding of the visual arts program. During these years he would come to focus more on painting in watercolour; he did not produce any more prints after 1952. With fading vision, Phillips moved to Victoria with his wife, Gladys, in 1960, where he died in 1963.

Walter Phillips remains best known as a master and pioneer of the Canadian woodblock print, but the pinnacle of his technical achievement in this medium was inspired by his time spent in the distinctive Precambrian Shield landscape of northwestern Ontario.