Robert genn quotes

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.

Style essentially appeared out of what I liked to do.

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.

Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A high price may be part of the mystique in selling difficult art.

Whatever you do, don't let your system run you.

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.

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

Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk, sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed.

I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes.

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

The only bad studio is the unused one.

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?

Which is better--feeling good or getting good?

With repetition, the alternate approaches become clear, options open.

No matter what your disciplines, you need your own personal lists.

Accepting the gift may take the accumulated wisdom of some trodden miles, but it also opens the welcome windows of joy.

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.

Where there are few expectations, expediency wins.

This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.

Evolved creators are just as curious about their failures as they are of their successes.

Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.

In art, everyone who plays wins.

Inspiration comes from doing.

Silent guns have virtue.

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

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.

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.

Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels, and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.

A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability.

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.

Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for.

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.

I find that as I get into a painting I have high hopes, then little by little I begin to see that it is not going to be the masterpiece I thought it would be, and I start putting my hopes into the next work.

As self-governing entities, artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change, we embrace growth and we embrace our future.

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.

A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.

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.

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

Quality is always in style.

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

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.

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.

Fact is, perfection is boring.

Artists with serious aspirations need to be left alone to follow the course of their own imagination.

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

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

God may work in light, but we mortals work in pigment.

One compositional element suggests and asks for another. This is what makes the activity interesting.

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

Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60.

I suppose what you're doing as a painter is making a record of your trip through life. I can't think of any job that is quite as satisfactory as doing a painting.

The job of art is to turn time into 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.

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

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

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."

No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself.

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

In the companionship of art we are all of a time. Early or late we are to be shared.

Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.

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.

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

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.

A painting has an intrinsic value which has nothing to do with critical assessments.

Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation.

Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.

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

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

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.

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

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.

So who are we going to blame for our disappointments and our failures?

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

Priests are often well-meaning people who haven't yet looked too thoroughly into comparative religion.

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.

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 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.

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.

To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.

Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.

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.

We artists give daily thanks for the miracle of our planet and for the inclination and the capability to honour it.

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

There is no progress without product.

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.

Our currency is what we are able to make.

You're right, super-realism is back in style.

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

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

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

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

Art is a Great Goddess of infinite intrigue and illusion, and even a lifetime of worship may not find her fickle soul.

When shucked and released from its edges, the windowless subject stands alone as its own thing.

We artists allow others to see through our windows.

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

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.

The thing about art is that life is in no danger of being meaningless.

Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here.

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.

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

It's okay to doubt. It's important to test. The way to discover secrets is to be a student of your own efforts.

A method of achieving wild enthusiasm is to act wildly enthusiastic. Often, a growing and beautiful love-affair develops quite automatically.

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

Know that to begin is often better than to think.

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!

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.

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

Drawing is still the bottom line.

Prices need to be fair, appropriate and consistent.

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.

Flowers are an education in a vase.

Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.

Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings.

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

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.

Pushing yourself to extremes blows out the cobwebs of trusted habit. It shakes up what you know to be reliably safe and substitutes the miracle of insecurity.