Robert Genn famous quotes
06-24-2025
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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 -
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 -
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 -
The only bad studio is the unused one.
-- Robert Genn -
Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life.
-- Robert Genn -
Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.
-- Robert Genn -
Know that to begin is often better than to think.
-- Robert Genn -
Art is a path on which we honour our world. Art may not be the only path, but it is a good path, even though at times a difficult one. As bearers of this honour, we artists do not need to simply render our world as we see it but as we might ourselves redesign it. As artists, one of our privileges is to invent.
-- Robert Genn -
We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain.
-- Robert Genn -
Art, because it's so easy to do, and yet so difficult to do well, encourages humility in the human soul.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability...
-- Robert Genn -
Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.
-- Robert Genn -
Art is a course in personal development that has no reliable diploma and no known end. The pursuit of art instructs in beauty as well as ugliness, fantasy as well as common sense. Art levels souls and baffles brains. Art softens pain because it is pain. Art gives joy because it is joy.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
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 -
When you sit down to paint or draw, you form yourself into a posture of praise
-- Robert Genn -
Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description.
-- Robert Genn -
Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do.
-- Robert Genn -
Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation.
-- Robert Genn -
The most expensive bottle of wine ever sold - a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, supposedly once the property of Thomas Jefferson... It was sold at Christie's in London in 1985 for $156,000.00. Like a lot of high-priced art, the bottle is essentially undrinkable.
-- Robert Genn -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
A high price may be part of the mystique in selling difficult art.
-- Robert Genn -
No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
In life and art it's better to be an enthusiastic amateur than a jaded professional.
-- Robert Genn -
People suspend judgment in the presence of mystery.
-- Robert Genn -
A list of your own making is the most powerful list of all... The good stuff can be 'love at first sight' - in need of study, courting and claiming. And like a love note, it's nice to have things in writing.
-- Robert Genn -
With materialization in play you have magic in your fingers and you become the wizard.
-- Robert Genn -
Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
Previously unseen boo-boos come at you like tattoos on a teenage girl.
-- Robert Genn -
I'm a believer in moderation in all things, including moderation.
-- Robert Genn -
Most of my contemporary grant-getters are now doing something other than painting.
-- Robert Genn -
Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.
-- Robert Genn -
True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Seems those with money who don't worry about money have big walls.
-- Robert Genn -
Music is the most abstract of the arts and it expresses the sound of the universe itself. These are the real rhythms that stimulate the artist's mind and guide his hand.
-- Robert Genn -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
Carl Orff's Carmina Burana has the ability to take you from placidity to power in one sonic breath. It is music of dignity and strength, with primitive, energetic passages, evoking absolute beauty from the simplest of phrases. It brings up something that has everything to do with significance - squeezing joy and motif that you just can't drop - it stays with you.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for.
-- Robert Genn -
The Canadian painter A. Y. Jackson noted that 'failure of sight' was a tiresome problem. He meant we should be able to look at our work-in-progress as if it were previously unseen.
-- Robert Genn -
In the companionship of art we are all of a time. Early or late we are to be shared.
-- Robert Genn -
Factual titling satisfies and is pure by its lack of bamboozlement.
-- Robert Genn -
An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.
-- Robert Genn -
Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels, and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.
-- Robert Genn -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Sometimes... we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests, competitions, thrive on it. Who cares?
-- Robert Genn -
For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity.
-- Robert Genn -
Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe.
-- Robert Genn -
Accepting the gift may take the accumulated wisdom of some trodden miles, but it also opens the welcome windows of joy.
-- Robert Genn -
A painting has an intrinsic value which has nothing to do with critical assessments.
-- Robert Genn -
We artists allow others to see through our windows.
-- Robert Genn -
When shucked and released from its edges, the windowless subject stands alone as its own thing.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings.
-- Robert Genn -
Do not be frivolous with the gift of a day. Right now it's all you have. Yesterday is history.
-- Robert Genn -
By thinking you are cleverer and more talented than your buddies, many a career has been blotted.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
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 -
This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.
-- Robert Genn -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk, sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
When I'm in the studio I often hunger for the road. And when away I long for the efficiency of the studio.
-- Robert Genn -
Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.
-- Robert Genn -
Style essentially appeared out of what I liked to do.
-- Robert Genn -
I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes.
-- Robert Genn -
Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60.
-- Robert Genn -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
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 -
The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Artists... do not need the applause or condemnation of the critics, the ideas of other artists, or the demands of the collectors.
-- Robert Genn -
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!
-- Robert Genn -
Start with the foreground. Compositions fail when the foreground is treated as an afterthought.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
As self-governing entities, artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change, we embrace growth and we embrace our future.
-- Robert Genn -
Incompetence, in my books, is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow.
-- Robert Genn -
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 -
Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here.
-- Robert Genn -
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.
-- Robert Genn -
Objects are held by the backgrounds that are cut into them.
-- Robert Genn
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