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Robert Genn Quotes



Quotes by Robert Genn - (175 quotes)

Robert Genn - From the Abstraction category:

Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Acceptance category:

The oceans of art are awash with people who can't paint. When those who can't paint notice those who can, they are sometimes not inclined to accept them as serious like themselves. It's an unfortunate quirk of human nature and ought not to be fretted over. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Acrylics category:

In acrylics, what you lose on the straights you make up for on the corners. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Acrylics category:

In acrylic, happiness comes a bit faster. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Activity category:

Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Aging category:

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. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Art category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Art category:

Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Artists category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Attitude category:

When you sit down to paint or draw, you form yourself into a posture of praise. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Audience category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Beginning category:

Know that to begin is often better than to think. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Beginning category:

Start with the foreground. Compositions fail when the foreground is treated as an afterthought. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Blocks category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Books category:

Continued growth through reading, as well as seeing and exploration, is a vital part of the greater joy of staying with it. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Boredom category:

Fact is, perfection is boring. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Change category:

If what you're doing now isn't working, try something else. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Change category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Collectors category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Commerce category:

Our currency is what we are able to make. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Competence category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Competence category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Competition category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Complaining category:

We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Composition category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Composition category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Composition category:

A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability... (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Composition category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Construction category:

Objects are held by the backgrounds that are cut into them. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Creativity category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Criticism category:

We artists stick ourselves out. This in itself deserves respect. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Criticism category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Critics category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Culture category:

Painters paint, and history continues to make fools of curators. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Curiosity category:

Evolved creators are just as curious about their failures as they are of their successes. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Curiosity category:

Curiosity allows your unique "owned processes" to draw you toward creative conclusions. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Danger category:

By stealthily teaching dependence, photography can turn out to be dangerous. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Dealers category:

Dealer goodwill and friendship are keys to thrival. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Deception category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Depression category:

Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Design category:

An opening and a receptiveness to design and pattern for its own sake seems to free the painting hand. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Disappointment category:

Well considered abandonment is a trusted teacher. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Dissatisfaction category:

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. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Drawing category:

Drawing is still the bottom line. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Drawing category:

A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Earth category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Education category:

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. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Education category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Effort category:

To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Ego category:

Regarding ego force, we don't always like people who have it. If you have it, and need to be liked, you ought to consider letting most of it come out the end of your brush. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Encouragement category:

When you bend to lift up - be gentle - allow that they [artists] are to be kings and queens of their own solitudes. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Enthusiasm category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Excellence category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Exhibitions category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Expectation category:

Where there are few expectations, expediency wins. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Fear category:

Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of competition... Fear of being an imposter. Fear of not being paid. Fear of being paid... Fear of the unknown. Fear of commitment... Fear of wasting time. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of fear itself. Pop, pop, pop. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Flow category:

Your flow is as tangible and real as any locomotive, and just as powerful. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Flow category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Focus category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Gradation category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Humility category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Ideas category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Imagination category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Immortality category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Influence category:

The pursuit of art is a delicate balance between influence and self-assertiveness. As self-realized artists, we all have different levels of tolerance for this mystery. Influence is like Scotch; it's good to know your personal limit. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Innocence category:

-on the Mackenzie River, 2000...
Others have told me you can feel it in your brush, and I do now. A family of mergansers swims close by - the young are almost ready to fly south. Perhaps you have felt it too - it has something to do with purity. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Insecurity category:

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. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Inspiration category:

Inspiration comes from doing. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Journey category:

Over the days of this journey a kind of energetic serenity has set in. Something happens with the mixture of space and time. I feel a sense of story. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Journey category:

I required a destination that was worthy of many visits. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Keys category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Keys category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Knowledge category:

Artist, gain knowledge, but know that the greatest guru of all is the guru within. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Knowledge category:

One of the ways to learn is to know when you're making failures. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Life category:

Life is a passage through a museum of beauty. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Loneliness category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Love category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Magic category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Materials category:

With materialization in play you have magic in your fingers and you become the wizard. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Mediocrity category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Mentors category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Methodology category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Miracles category:

We live our short spans in the vortex of a miracle, and while we may not be the center of that vortex, it is magic to be anywhere in there. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Mistakes category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Mistakes category:

-re: secondary easel...
Previously unseen boo-boos come at you like tattoos on a teenage girl. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Moderation category:

I'm a believer in moderation in all things, including moderation. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Money category:

-experience of sales during economic downturn...
Seems those with money who don't worry about money have big walls. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Money category:

Most of my contemporary grant-getters are now doing something other than painting. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Muse category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Muse category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Muse category:

True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Muse category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Muse category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Music category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Music category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Music category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Mysteries category:

People suspend judgment in the presence of mystery. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Nature category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Nature category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Nudes category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Observation category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Obsession category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Painting category:

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. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Painting category:

The art of painting will survive and thrive because it is easy to do and difficult to do well. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Pets category:

Dogs are angels sent from heaven in order to help us to be better people. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Pets category:

Every puppy begins in joy and ends in tears. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Photography category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Plagiarism category:

Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Planning category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Play category:

In art, everyone who plays wins. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Plein-Air category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Plein-Air category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Portraiture category:

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. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Portraiture category:

While loaded with painterly conventions, these mouthy nuances are the keys to personality. It's easy to be an authority on the mouth, but the darn things are difficult to paint. The mouth is where the portrait painter finds his true humility. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Possessions category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Power category:

Properly channeled, common feelings of inadequacy lead to powers of accomplishment. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Pricing category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Pricing category:

A high price may be part of the mystique in selling difficult art. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Pricing category:

Prices need to be fair, appropriate and consistent. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Priorities category:

No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Production category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Profession category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Profession category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Progress category:

There is no progress without product. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Purpose category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Quality category:

Quality is always in style. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Quality category:

It's better to have a small diamond than a large piece of glass. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Rejection category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Religion category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Repetition category:

With repetition, the alternate approaches become clear, options open. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Risk category:

Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Searching category:

Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Seeing category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Shock category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Signatures category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Silence category:

Silent guns have virtue. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Solitude category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Standards category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Standards category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Standards category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Struggle category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Studio category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Studio category:

-on the home of Dylan Thomas...
As I looked at this modest building... I could see, just as freedom is most on the mind of those confined to dungeons, imagination can fly from humble, quiet, unstimulating places. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Style category:

Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Style category:

Style essentially appeared out of what I liked to do. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Subject category:

-on the Rocky Mountains...
I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Subject category:

Flowers are an education in a vase. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Survival category:

'Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Symbols category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Technology category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Technology category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Theme category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Thinking category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Time category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Time category:

The job of art is to turn time into things. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Timeliness category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Titles category:

Factual titling satisfies and is pure by its lack of bamboozlement. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Titles category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Titles category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Tradition category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Tradition category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Tyranny category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Tyranny category:

For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Tyranny category:

Your mind is a tyrant. It can only be subverted by the persistence of your eyes, your intuition and your heart. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Universe category:

Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Windows category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Windows category:

We artists allow others to see through our windows. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Windows category:

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

Robert Genn - From the Winning category:

-the day he won first prize in Junior Watercolour, age 14...
That day I became a painter. I now knew what I needed - freedom of the pathways, freedom to do as I wished with what I saw, freedom to catch wonder before it disappeared, freedom to become proficient and the freedom to sign my own name to whatever at will. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Wonder category:

- The Hawaii School...
I'm afloat in the marvellous diversity, the undersea wonder and its brilliant paintability. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Words category:

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)

Robert Genn - From the Words category:

Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Work category:

The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Worth category:

A painting has an intrinsic value which has nothing to do with critical assessments. (Robert Genn)

Robert Genn - From the Writing category:

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)