Top 57 Quotes & Sayings by Sara Genn

Artists and their subjects are the star-crossed lovers of the world. They recognize each other on impact.

Art begins when an observer's sensibilities engage with the understatements of a calculating craftsman.

Does an artist truly need to understand her times in order to create? I'm not sure. We're all sitting in a context. It's a market.

Learning a new thing is a shortcut to joy and informs your area of mastery.

You are responsible for radicalizing your strengths.

Painters tend to ignore the challenges and thrills that sculptors enjoy daily - volume... like the perfect, imperfect voluminous oval of the egg.

You are responsible for understanding your limitations.

New surroundings have a way of returning attention to areas that may have become rote.

You are solely responsible for doing the work required to become better.

I can hide as much as I want in my colours

Art is sometimes likened to a mirror... an expression of universal human truth, executed with a degree of skill.

Having a favourite colour is like having a favourite lung.

Some artists approach their 'why?' intuitively, and work toward giving it a voice through their technical skill. Others begin as technicians, and develop, or discover, their 'why?' as they become stronger communicators.

Going beyond one's backyard grants one perspective.

Stretch your goals... In other words, think big and think far off.

Could rivalry be a productive system?

Vibrancy is only as effective as the mastering of restraint.

Make a searching and fearless inventory of your creative curiosity.

Scientists tracking mirror neurons noticed that a monkey will get excited not just when holding a banana, but also when seeing someone else holding a banana.

Having a favorite color is like having a favorite lung.

You need to paint with enough assurance and confidence to know you can do whatever you like.

The strategy of keeping the studio close, like an outbuilding five paces from the house, or in the loft next door, or with the studio on one end and the bed on the other - makes art always available.

Study the processes and methods of those who are better at it than you... there's someone who knows something you don't, who has honed a skill more than you have. Rival your rival.

Half of the pleasure of painting and feeling the joy of the creative act is sharing it with others and the feeling of connection. It could just be the colour. But it is something that someone other than you has seen and felt. It is momentous. It is magic.

I value the momentum of making the list and the drive to tick. Sometimes I add stuff I've already accomplished so I can get going on my feelings of accomplishment.

Joy is my energy and energy is my powerhouse.

Be artistic, choose taste, set an example.

There's a saying that goes, 'The universe gives you a whisper, then a nudge, then a push and then an anvil on your head.

As a community of artists, we might just keep safe each other's love affair.

Making strides in areas unencumbered by hard-won expectation feels effervescent. By switching into child-mode, shuffling the cortex, we remember our innocence, when we knew less. These are the essentials of continued aesthetic discovery.

Ideas bubble differently when we're forced to inquire about the obvious.

Read in order to write, but paint in order to paint.

Why all these years have I been agreeably turning down the stereo every time the phone rings?

Artists live in an imperfect world where affairs of the heart must sometimes be compromised with business.

The Painter's Keys is a timeless, universal guide to lifemanship masquerading as a painting blog.

Tear-stained flops are necessary. They're the gift you give yourself when you're willing to fly.

Things we do regularly become buried with habits, and we lose the ability to extract their powers to inspire.

Remember the importance of phrases... a piece of something, an entry, a moment, a mark. This adjusts the pressure of the giant task of creating the perfect masterwork.

Value choices are intuitive... It's fun to see how much you can get without leaning on contrast.

In the art game we do our own cooking.

Refreshing failures roll off the travel easel like ants from a picnic blanket.

As artists, we bear the charge of signalling, guiding, communicating and inspiriting change.

Pay no attention to the less courageous.

If an artist comes intuitively from the point of design, notan - lightness/darkness - is natural.

These days, if you happen to be a poet you have to sing your words to get your ideas out.

To return to awareness is to notice this new world with baby-eyes, and to appreciate her strangeness.

Art is a perfectly complete cause.

Learn from the greats, and expose yourself to better work.

A millionaire is a person who is free, who does what she loves, who has unlimited materials, her choice of tools, abundance, inspiration, freedom and an inflated sense of entitlement to have, create and get more.

Once you sophisticate the in-betweens, your blacks and whites can take their solos and shine.

Every task is given equal importance - that way I can pick and choose my tasks based on the ebb and flow of my creative metabolism.

Why can't we all just acknowledge that 'nature' - that is, 'sex' or 'erotic' images, which are really just 'attracters' are everywhere. Of course a flower looks like what it looks like - that's what it is - to a bee.

Rules are, like an ashtray-in-progress, meant to be thrown, poked and reshaped to suit yourself.

The 'wandering studio' gathers and stores experiences, takes chances with the unfamiliar and requires a measure of self-trust. Mistakes are part of the change of scene.

Play is your route to mastery.

I'll put into words my experience as it is unfolding now in my life... in such a way that I might find comfort in knowing that someone else has the same thoughts and experiences.

In modern times we are often encouraged to protect our ego-force and individuality by securing a private world in which to develop our unique artistic voice. Many artists find themselves solo-paddling along a private and unchallenging river... Could rivalry be a productive system?