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.

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.

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 job of art is to turn time into things.

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 drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.

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

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.

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.

Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.

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.

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

The only bad studio is the unused one.

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

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.

Know that to begin is often better than to think.

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

Inspiration comes from doing.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Quality is always in style.

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

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

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

A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Drawing is still the bottom line.

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.

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

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

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.

Well considered abandonment is a trusted teacher.

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

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

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.