Top 160 Robert Genn Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

53. “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

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

— Robert Genn

55. “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

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

— Robert Genn

57. “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

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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

63. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

66. “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

67. “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

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

— Robert Genn

69. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

73. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

76. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

81. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

86. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

90. “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

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

— Robert Genn

92. “Silent guns have virtue.”

— Robert Genn

93. “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

94. “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

95. “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

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn

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

— Robert Genn