Top 100 Robert Genn Quotes
#1. God may work in light, but we mortals work in pigment.
Robert Genn
#2. The centipede has rhythm and flow in its hundred legs precisely because it does not have to think about it. Consider this the next time you move the instruments of your art.
Robert Genn
#4. The guy may be totally motivated, connected and inspired, but if he doesn't know how to do it, he's not the guy to take out your appendix.
Robert Genn
#5. The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts.
Robert Genn
#6. For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity.
Robert Genn
#7. Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60.
Robert Genn
#8. We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain.
Robert Genn
#9. As self-governing entities, artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change, we embrace growth and we embrace our future.
Robert Genn
#10. No one would have the courage to walk up to a writer and ask to look at the last few pages of his manuscript, but they feel perfectly comfortable staring over an artist's shoulder while he is trying to paint.
Robert Genn
#12. Sometimes you can be lucky enough to establish a working relationship with another artist who takes away the loneliness, particularly in travel and outdoor work.
Robert Genn
#13. As well as many subspecies, the main blocks are fear of failure after previous success, fear of success due to a sense of unworthiness, lack of potential venue, jaded attitude, crisis of confidence, evidence of persistent poor quality, lackadaisical motivation, and common everyday shortage of ideas.
Robert Genn
#14. Evolved creators are just as curious about their failures as they are of their successes.
Robert Genn
#15. Previously unseen boo-boos come at you like tattoos on a teenage girl.
Robert Genn
#17. Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation.
Robert Genn
#18. A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.
Robert Genn
#19. Waiting for inspiration is for amateurs; professionals get to work.
Robert Genn
#20. We know the human mind is programmed to glaze over when bored. Conversely, the mind is more alert in the presence of novelty. Our muse needs to stay seductive to keep our hands doing the right things.
Robert Genn
#21. We artists allow others to see through our windows.
Robert Genn
#22. The artist needs to sit patiently at the feet of Nature in all Her moods and nuances and silently develop the skills to honour Her. There are no recipes for Autumn.
Robert Genn
#23. We are trying to evoke and reinforce meanings from the spaces we cover and the times we're given. Short or long this becomes our purpose. What we artists do is important stuff.
Robert Genn
#24. Art, because it's so easy to do, and yet so difficult to do well, encourages humility in the human soul.
Robert Genn
#25. I have always found it a testament to the importance of painting that the first thing many people do when their home is on fire is to grab their paintings and then run out.
Robert Genn
#26. Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.
Robert Genn
#27. While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone.
Robert Genn
#28. Now familiar with my own particular voice and accent, my Dragon app prints out exactly what I speak into my iPad. Twenty years ago this miracle would be unthinkable.
Robert Genn
#29. Artists should be aware that petty stroking could be the source of arrested productivity. An artist's job includes the avoidance of premature closure by the begged or gratuitous approval of others.
Robert Genn
#30. The brilliance of art as a collectible is that it has a way of reaching out on an emotional level. It touches on mystery, even spirituality.
Robert Genn
#31. Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life.
Robert Genn
#32. In acrylics, what you lose on the straights you make up for on the corners.
Robert Genn
#33. The short-goal habit is key to larger success and is at the root of human greatness. Life is think and do, think and do, think and do. Small steps can be greater than great leaps.
Robert Genn
#34. Flat, uninteresting parts of paintings are, in fact, a ruse to get the viewer to see what needs to be seen.
Robert Genn
#35. For all of us, self-briefing before going out or starting a project sharpens artistic wit.
Robert Genn
#36. While knowledge of tools and the love of motif may be in your backpack, and all mountains may be measured by their previous heroes, art must exist for you in a place beyond the judgment of others.
Robert Genn
#37. There is a wonderful feeling when you walk into your own exhibition. You see the work as a true extension of yourself. Win or lose, your interests have led you to an accumulation of your personal expression, signed lower right,
mounted to best advantage.
Robert Genn
#38. As you do your work, you discover what you love to do.
Robert Genn
#39. Exploit a subject or a theme to its greatest potential by bringing all possible reference to bear - then put aside the reference and create again using the potential of your unfettered imagination.
Robert Genn
#40. A high price may be part of the mystique in selling difficult art.
Robert Genn
#41. Accepting the gift may take the accumulated wisdom of some trodden miles, but it also opens the welcome windows of joy.
Robert Genn
#42. You're right, super-realism is back in style.
Robert Genn
#43. It is necessary to put yourself out for rejection, and accept that you will be rejected.
Robert Genn
#44. The problem with University degrees, particularly the more spectacular ones, is that people who possess them can fall into the trap of thinking people who don't have them don't know anything.
Robert Genn
#45. We are not born focusing. It's an acquired skill that requires initial effort and constant upgrading.
Robert Genn
#46. Creativity is dynamic, it asserts life, frees the human spirit, conquers mental lassitude and illness, and makes real the outrageous potential of the universal imagination.
Robert Genn
#47. Where there are few expectations, expediency wins.
Robert Genn
#48. Sometimes ... we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests, competitions, thrive on it. Who cares?
Robert Genn
#49. Paintings, like tombstones, will last a good five hundred years, well into twenty or thirty generations.
Robert Genn
#50. Learning to focus and pay attention, if only for a short time, has been identified as a primary key to the development of human effectiveness.
Robert Genn
#51. Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings.
Robert Genn
#52. I do know, for most of us, the very best of times are when you're in your own space sweating, trying to squeeze quality out of imperfect capabilities.
Robert Genn
#53. Artists cannot be micro-managed. We can take heart that everything we do is different from the last thing we did - or indeed everything that's ever been done. That knowledge is the key to sound mentoring.
Robert Genn
#54. True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.
Robert Genn
#56. An early flourish of confidence is useful. Then there's the small crudities - the slubs and bumps that come with outdoor work - the odd charm of imprecision.
Robert Genn
#58. Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.
Robert Genn
#59. The job of art is to turn time into things.
Robert Genn
#60. Great paintings have gradations, large and small ... They serve to lift the subject off the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Gradations are an essential abstract convention.
Robert Genn
#61. In life and art we need to make sure that we honour that which our hearts and brains tell us is good. And we should cast a philosophic yet curious smile at that which our hearts and brains tell us otherwise.
Robert Genn
#62. While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do.
Robert Genn
#63. Artists with serious aspirations need to be left alone to follow the course of their own imagination.
Robert Genn
#64. Artspeak is an arcane writing style that can result in a vocabulary of obscurities ... Today, some of the more spectacular examples are in artist's statements.
Robert Genn
#65. Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.
Robert Genn
#66. Our bodies, apart from their brilliant role as drawing exercises, are the temples of our being. Like the bodies of all fauna, they deserve both our study and our appreciation.
Robert Genn
#67. Take your brush here and there like a bee in an alpine meadow. In other words, don't laboriously work on or try to finish off one particular part. Paint promiscuously.
Robert Genn
#68. Do not be frivolous with the gift of a day. Right now it's all you have. Yesterday is history.
Robert Genn
#69. A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness.
Robert Genn
#70. With materialization in play you have magic in your fingers and you become the wizard.
Robert Genn
#71. Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.
Robert Genn
#72. When you sit down to paint or draw, you form yourself into a posture of praise
Robert Genn
#73. Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.
Robert Genn
#74. My app is the same juicy paint used by Vincent Van Gogh; my screen is the woven canvas of Titian. Painting by hand, I've come to figure, is a certain kind of love.
Robert Genn
#75. One of the ways to learn is to know when you're making failures.
Robert Genn
#76. Many of us knuckle-dragging brush-painters think that 'behind the times' is part of our job description. Why deny ourselves the authentic journey of a time-honoured form?
Robert Genn
#77. Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here.
Robert Genn
#78. Critics are the products of their own times and biases and what they have to say about works of art is as transient and insubstantial as fashion.
Robert Genn
#79. Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels, and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.
Robert Genn
#80. We artists stick ourselves out. This in itself deserves respect.
Robert Genn
#81. Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do.
Robert Genn
#82. Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.
Robert Genn
#84. The overly-verbal artist is led by his understanding of things
rather than by direct observation of things as they are.
Robert Genn
#85. Our human landscape is overburdened with competitions and contests. Art need not be a contest. Art is a personal quest for quality. Quality is the forerunner of acceptance. Character is the forerunner of quality. Be your own discriminating connoisseur.
Robert Genn
#86. In acrylic, happiness comes a bit faster.
Robert Genn
#87. Which is better
feeling good or getting good?
Robert Genn
#88. One compositional element suggests and asks for another. This is what makes the activity interesting.
Robert Genn
#89. Prices need to be fair, appropriate and consistent.
Robert Genn
#90. This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.
Robert Genn
#91. Curiosity allows your unique "owned processes" to draw you toward creative conclusions.
Robert Genn
#92. Seems those with money who don't worry about money have big walls.
Robert Genn
#93. Factual titling satisfies and is pure by its lack of bamboozlement.
Robert Genn
#94. Art is a Great Goddess of infinite intrigue and illusion, and even a lifetime of worship may not find her fickle soul.
Robert Genn
#95. To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.
Robert Genn
#96. No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself.
Robert Genn
#97. Perhaps we might, within the anatomy of our imaginations, think once more of the naked body as a vessel of grace, taste and wonder. In the spotted history of art, stranger things have happened.
Robert Genn
#98. A painting has an intrinsic value which has nothing to do with critical assessments.
Robert Genn
#99. The studio is an extension of the sandbox and the kindergarten playroom. It has a dynamic unlike any office or factory. It's a room at the service of a dreamer on her way to becoming a master.
Robert Genn
#100. An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.
Robert Genn
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