110+ Robert Genn Quotes On Freedom, Education And Expressive

Robert Genn was a Canadian painter and printmaker. He was known for his abstract landscapes and figurative works. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and a founding member of the Federation of Canadian Artists. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robert Genn on leadership, freedom, love.

Top 10 Robert Genn Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. One of the ways to learn is to know when you're making failures.
4. Keep busy while you are waiting for something to happen.
5. Art is a form of love. Art is the ultimate gift. Art heals life.
6. 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.
7. One compositional element suggests and asks for another. This is what makes the activity interesting.
8. When you serve your passions, proficiency gradually takes over and becomes habitual.
9. Never forget that the nurturing and preservation of your own muse is job one. Lose it and you may be losing a great deal.
10. We have been mysteriously gifted this amazing life. Let us not complain.

Robert Genn Short Quotes

• With repetition, the alternate approaches become clear, options open.
• Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.
• 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.
• For all of us, self-briefing before going out or starting a project sharpens artistic wit.
• No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself.
• Quality is always in style.
• Starving artist' is acceptable at age 20, suspect at age 40, and problematical at age 60.
• To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.
• In life and art it's better to be an enthusiastic amateur than a jaded professional.

Robert Genn Quotes About Love

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

My app is the same juicy paint used by Vincent Van Gogh; my screen is the woven canvas of Titian. Painting by hand, I've come to figure, is a certain kind of love. — Robert Genn

As you do your work, you discover what you love to do. — Robert Genn

While knowledge of tools and the love of motif may be in your backpack, and all mountains may be measured by their previous heroes, art must exist for you in a place beyond the judgment of others. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

Robert Genn Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

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

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

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. — Robert Genn

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

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

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

The area between the nose and the chin, the subject of kissing and the vehicle for speech, is perhaps even more known and set upon than the eyes. The mouth is also riddled with a complex interweaving of folds, curves, flats and lost-and-found edges. These nuances are needed by a perceptive person who might try to understand human nature. — Robert Genn

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

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

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. — Robert Genn

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

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

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. — Robert Genn

Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

Our currency is what we are able to make. — Robert Genn

True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work. — Robert Genn

I'm a believer in moderation in all things, including moderation. — Robert Genn

Creativity is dynamic, it asserts life, frees the human spirit, conquers mental lassitude and illness, and makes real the outrageous potential of the universal imagination. — Robert Genn

Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here. — Robert Genn

In art, everyone who plays wins. — Robert Genn

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

An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action. — Robert Genn

Objects are held by the backgrounds that are cut into them. — Robert Genn

As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

As self-governing entities, artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change, we embrace growth and we embrace our future. — Robert Genn

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

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

This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques. — Robert Genn

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? — Robert Genn

Many a fine style has evolved from a decent handicap. — Robert Genn

Critics are the products of their own times and biases and what they have to say about works of art is as transient and insubstantial as fashion. — Robert Genn

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

Once as I sat painting, I became aware of a man's face hovering near me, moving closer and closer to the panel I was working on. When he spoke he said, 'That is a fantastic brush! — Robert Genn

Painters paint, and history continues to make fools of curators. — Robert Genn

The overly-verbal artist is led by his understanding of things--rather than by direct observation of things as they are. — Robert Genn

I've come to realize that companionship and mild competition can help build quality and lay the ground for excellence. — Robert Genn

Well considered abandonment is a trusted teacher. — Robert Genn

It is necessary to put yourself out for rejection, and accept that you will be rejected. — Robert Genn

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

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

We artists give daily thanks for the miracle of our planet and for the inclination and the capability to honour it. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

Our human landscape is overburdened with competitions and contests. Art need not be a contest. Art is a personal quest for quality. Quality is the forerunner of acceptance. Character is the forerunner of quality. Be your own discriminating connoisseur. — Robert Genn

When shucked and released from its edges, the windowless subject stands alone as its own thing. — Robert Genn

Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation. — Robert Genn

A young person wanting to become an artist might simply go purposefully and dedicatedly to his or her room with a few books and a thousand blank canvases for four years. — Robert Genn

Incompetence, in my books, is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow. — Robert Genn

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

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

For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity. — Robert Genn

Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk, sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed. — Robert Genn

When you sit down to paint or draw, you form yourself into a posture of praise — Robert Genn

Sometimes... we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests, competitions, thrive on it. Who cares? — Robert Genn

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

Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description. — Robert Genn

While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

Dealer goodwill and friendship are keys to thrival. — Robert Genn

An early flourish of confidence is useful. Then there's the small crudities - the slubs and bumps that come with outdoor work - the odd charm of imprecision. — Robert Genn

It's my wish that I can help creative people think of new ways to be creative - to get more joy and understanding from their own unique processes. — Robert Genn

No one would have the courage to walk up to a writer and ask to look at the last few pages of his manuscript, but they feel perfectly comfortable staring over an artist's shoulder while he is trying to paint. — Robert Genn

In acrylics, what you lose on the straights you make up for on the corners. — Robert Genn

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

More than any other colour, red is loaded for action. — Robert Genn

The pursuit of art is a delicate balance between influence and self-assertiveness. As self-realized artists, we all have different levels of tolerance for this mystery. Influence is like Scotch; it's good to know your personal limit. — Robert Genn

When I'm in the studio I often hunger for the road. And when away I long for the efficiency of the studio. — Robert Genn

Artists with serious aspirations need to be left alone to follow the course of their own imagination. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do. — Robert Genn

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. — Robert Genn

In painting you cover up your sins and everyone thinks you're naturally talented. — Robert Genn

The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts. — Robert Genn

Canned reference is practically always loaded with problems. Photos, for example, contrive to kill imagination and stifle the natural development of creative patterns. While "ready-mades" do show up from time to time, they are rare. Art need not be what is seen-but what is to be seen. "Nature," said James McNeill Whistler, "is usually wrong." — Robert Genn

Most of my contemporary grant-getters are now doing something other than painting. — Robert Genn

Silent guns have virtue. — Robert Genn

Art is a path on which we honour our world. — Robert Genn

Your easel is the nuclear sun of an uncommon universe. — Robert Genn

While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone. — Robert Genn

We artists stick ourselves out. This in itself deserves respect. — Robert Genn

I simply like the monumentality of the subjects - the opportunity for metaphor and the varied light that comes with high altitudes. — Robert Genn

Music is the most abstract of the arts and it expresses the sound of the universe itself. These are the real rhythms that stimulate the artist's mind and guide his hand. — Robert Genn

A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness. — Robert Genn

Evolved creators are just as curious about their failures as they are of their successes. — Robert Genn

Life Lessons by Robert Genn

1. Robert Genn's work emphasizes the importance of perseverance and dedication to one's craft in order to achieve success.
2. He also stresses the importance of experimentation and exploration in the creative process, and encourages artists to take risks and push their boundaries.
3. Lastly, Genn's work emphasizes the importance of having a strong personal vision and staying true to it in order to create meaningful and unique artwork.