Top 160 Robert Genn Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Well considered abandonment is a trusted teacher.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

54. “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

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

— Robert Genn

56. “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

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

— Robert Genn

58. “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

59. “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

60. “There is no progress without product.”

— Robert Genn

61. “The job of art is to turn time into things.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

63. “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

64. “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

65. “I always thought signing was an artist’s honour and guarantee of authenticity.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

67. “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

68. “Previously unseen boo-boos come at you like tattoos on a teenage girl.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

70. “Visual tonics such as ‘timed creativity’ need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

72. “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

73. “The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts.”

— Robert Genn

74. “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

75. “Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

77. “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

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

— Robert Genn

79. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

84. “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

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

— Robert Genn

86. “Priests are often well-meaning people who haven’t yet looked too thoroughly into comparative religion.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

88. “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

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

— Robert Genn

90. “Silent guns have virtue.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

92. “In acrylic, happiness comes a bit faster.”

— Robert Genn

93. “We artists allow others to see through our windows.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

95. “As you do your work, you discover what you love to do.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

97. “In art, everyone who plays wins.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

99. “Whatever you do, don’t let your system run you.”

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn