Walter J. Phillips: At The Lake

This special presentation of works on paper by the Canadian painter and printmaker Walter J. Phillips explores the artist’s artistic response to Ontario’s Lake of the Woods region. 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 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. This subject represents a significant portion of Phillips’s life’s work, and it is gathered here for the first time.