Robert Genn quotes:

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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

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

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

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Drawing is still the bottom line.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

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

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

  • 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.

  • A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.

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

  • 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!

  • Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I'm a believer in moderation in all things, including moderation.

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

  • While obsessive behavior may be an antisocial plague to societies and communities at large, it's total moxie when lone practitioners catch it.

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

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

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

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

  • 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."

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

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

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

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

  • 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.

  • An opening and a receptiveness to design and pattern for its own sake seems to free the painting hand.

  • 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.

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

  • Art is a path on which we honour our world.

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

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

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

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

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

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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • Dealer goodwill and friendship are keys to thrival.

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

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • Fact is, perfection is boring.

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

  • Flowers are an education in a vase.

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

  • 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.

  • I always thought signing was an artist's honour and guarantee of authenticity.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I required a destination that was worthy of many visits.

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

  • 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.

  • In acrylic, happiness comes a bit faster.

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

  • In art, everyone who plays wins.

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

  • In painting you cover up your sins and everyone thinks you're naturally talented.

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

  • Inspiration comes from doing.

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

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

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

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

  • Know that to begin is often better than to think.

  • 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.

  • Life is a passage through a museum of beauty.

  • Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.

  • 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?

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

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

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