Philips Walter

Walter Philips is a Belgian artist, born in Kapellen in 1939. He is a painter and draftsman. He studied architectural drawing at the Academy in Mechelen and visual arts education at the State Normal School in Ghent under the guidance of O. Landuyt. From 1960 to 1974, he worked at the Atheneum in Etterbeek, the RMS in Mechelen, and Sint-Pieters-Leeuw. In 1974, he established himself as an independent and self-taught painter. He paints highly detailed scenes with figures in lacquer on panel, occasionally with surrealist overtones. His works often depict four or five men with somber or masked eyes and expressionless faces, standing in odd relations to one another and set in even stranger environments. From the press: “W.P. is a painter of nocturnal scenes that are sharper in outline, definition, color treatment, lighting, and clarity than the sunniest views: he sees clearly in the darkness of memory and the maze of expectations. Yet his nocturnal, almost exclusively male figures are patient and restrained, as if waiting for a strange arrival or a revelation that would urge them to act, for secret forces are at work around them” and “The works of W.P. stand out for their poetic and mischievous narrative tone, their fresh color palette, their clean contours, and their sublimated anecdote, which is largely socially critical and reveals a keen sense of observation and vivid imagination.” His work was acquired by the State in 1979 and 1982. He won first prize at the Municipal Painting Prize in Meise in 1982 and the Grand Prize Alfons Blomme in Roeselare in 1985. He works in Meise-Wolvertem. He is listed in BAS II and Two Centuries of Signatures of Belgian Artists (Piron).