Top 180 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Genn
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian artist Robert Genn.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60.
Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap.
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.
In art, everyone who plays wins.
Drawing is still the bottom line.
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.
Artists with serious aspirations need to be left alone to follow the course of their own imagination.
A drawing a day keeps the cobwebs away.
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.
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.
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.
Inspiration comes from doing.
When shucked and released from its edges, the windowless subject stands alone as its own thing.
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.
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.
While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone.
While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do.
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.
Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.
Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe.
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?
Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.
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.
Know that to begin is often better than to think.
The job of art is to turn time into things.
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.
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.
One of the ways to learn is to know when you're making failures.
This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.
Properly channeled, common feelings of inadequacy lead to powers of accomplishment.
Flat, uninteresting parts of paintings are, in fact, a ruse to get the viewer to see what needs to be seen.
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.
When you serve your passions, proficiency gradually takes over and becomes habitual.
An opening and a receptiveness to design and pattern for its own sake seems to free the painting hand.
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.
To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.
Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.
With materialization in play you have magic in your fingers and you become the wizard.
Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.
True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.
Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels, and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.
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.
Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life.
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.
The only bad studio is the unused one.
Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description.
Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for.
Seems those with money who don't worry about money have big walls.
With repetition, the alternate approaches become clear, options open.
Most of my contemporary grant-getters are now doing something other than painting.
Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk, sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed.
An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.
We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain.
Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.
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.
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.
Previously unseen boo-boos come at you like tattoos on a teenage girl.
A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability.
Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.
Related Authors
Ai Weiwei Quotes
Chinese
Artist
Andy Warhol Quotes
American
Artist
Claude Monet Quotes
French
Artist
David Hockney Quotes
English
Artist
Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes
American
Artist
Gerhard Richter Quotes
German
Artist
Henri Matisse Quotes
French
Artist
Kehinde Wiley Quotes
American
Artist
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
Italian
Artist
Marcel Duchamp Quotes
French
Artist
Marina Abramovic Quotes
Serbian
Artist
Maurice Sendak Quotes
American
Artist
Michelangelo Quotes
Italian
Artist
Paul Cezanne Quotes
French
Artist
Robert Henri Quotes
American
Artist
Yoko Ono Quotes
American
Artist