Robert Genn Quotes

We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain.

Quality is always in style.

Inspiration comes from doing.

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.

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.

As you do your work, you discover what you love to do.

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.

The overly-verbal artist is led by his understanding of things
rather than by direct observation of things as they are.

Where there are few expectations, expediency wins.

Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.

Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.

Don't assume there is only one way. Don't assume that mistakes are a bad thing. Don't think for one minute that everyone agrees with what 'good' is.

Waiting for inspiration is for amateurs; professionals get to work.

Objects are held by the backgrounds that are cut into them.

Properly channeled, common feelings of inadequacy lead to powers of accomplishment.

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.

With cropping, a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical, discriminating, innocent, open-minded, charmed, beguiled or bamboozled.

In acrylics, what you lose on the straights you make up for on the corners.

Certain music is terrifically inspirational and it is possible, months or even years afterwards, to look at a painting and remember the music that was playing during its execution.

Once as I sat painting, I became aware of a man's face hovering near me, moving closer and closer to the panel I was working on. When he spoke he said, 'That is a fantastic brush!

Artist, gain knowledge, but know that the greatest guru of all is the guru within.

Incompetence, in my books, is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow.

People suspend judgment in the presence of mystery.

Fact is, perfection is boring.

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.

In life and art it's better to be an enthusiastic amateur than a jaded professional.

A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability ...

Flowers are an education in a vase.

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.

By stealthily teaching dependence, photography can turn out to be dangerous.

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.

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.

When you sit down to paint or draw, you form yourself into a posture of praise

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.

Our currency is what we are able to make.

Art, because it's so easy to do, and yet so difficult to do well, encourages humility in the human soul.

Artists are supposed to be the ones with imagination. A good part of our job description is to get regular people to use theirs.

Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description.

While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do.

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.

When I'm in the studio I often hunger for the road. And when away I long for the efficiency of the studio.

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.

As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master.

A young person wanting to become an artist might simply go purposefully and dedicatedly to his or her room with a few books and a thousand blank canvases for four years.

Mountains in all their moods are symbols of something greater, something worth aspiring to. Mountains are powerful, dangerous, beautiful, noble and mysterious. Mountains get respect.

An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.

Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe.

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.

The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts.

Paintings, like tombstones, will last a good five hundred years, well into twenty or thirty generations.

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.

According to Mednick, after sleep, people are 33 percent more likely to be creative.

It is necessary to put yourself out for rejection, and accept that you will be rejected.

For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity.

We are not born focusing. It's an acquired skill that requires initial effort and constant upgrading.

By thinking you are cleverer and more talented than your buddies, many a career has been blotted.

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.

Do not be frivolous with the gift of a day. Right now it's all you have. Yesterday is history.

We artists stick ourselves out. This in itself deserves respect.

Canned reference is practically always loaded with problems. Photos, for example, contrive to kill imagination and stifle the natural development of creative patterns. While "ready-mades" do show up from time to time, they are rare. Art need not be what is seen-but what is to be seen. "Nature," said James McNeill Whistler, "is usually wrong."

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.

The painting world is awash with people who cannot paint. This is a condition that would not be tolerated in other professions such as Dentistry, Medicine, or among members of the Airline Pilot's Association.

When you serve your passions, proficiency gradually takes over and becomes habitual.

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.

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.

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.

Factual titling satisfies and is pure by its lack of bamboozlement.

Sometimes ... we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests, competitions, thrive on it. Who cares?

One of the ways to learn is to know when you're making failures.

More than any other colour, red is loaded for action.

For all of us, self-briefing before going out or starting a project sharpens artistic wit.

The only bad studio is the unused one.

Most of my contemporary grant-getters are now doing something other than painting.

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.

I required a destination that was worthy of many visits.

Flat, uninteresting parts of paintings are, in fact, a ruse to get the viewer to see what needs to be seen.

It's my wish that I can help creative people think of new ways to be creative - to get more joy and understanding from their own unique processes.

Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do.

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.

Curiosity allows your unique "owned processes" to draw you toward creative conclusions.

A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.

As we grow older, we realize just how limiting were our earlier conceptions. Art is something else. Art is fluid, transmutable, open-ended, never complete, and never perfect. Art is an event.

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.

While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone.

The area between the nose and the chin, the subject of kissing and the vehicle for speech, is perhaps even more known and set upon than the eyes. The mouth is also riddled with a complex interweaving of folds, curves, flats and lost-and-found edges. These nuances are needed by a perceptive person who might try to understand human nature.

Life is a passage through a museum of beauty.

Landscape painting tends to fall under more academic controls. I must say I often like working within these controls. It gives me the feeling that I'm taking part in a noble tradition.

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.

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.

Novelty is vital to the stimulation of life ... New neural paths are sparked by caving in to notions.

Dogs are angels sent from heaven in order to help us to be better people.

Seems those with money who don't worry about money have big walls.

Artists ... do not need the applause or condemnation of the critics, the ideas of other artists, or the demands of the collectors.

True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.

Painters paint, and history continues to make fools of curators.

Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.

It's better to have a small diamond than a large piece of glass.

I've come to realize that companionship and mild competition can help build quality and lay the ground for excellence.

The job of art is to turn time into things.

Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.