Robert Genn
Properly channeled, common feelings of inadequacy lead to powers of accomplishment.Collection: Power
To float like a cloud you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.Collection: Clouds
Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description.Collection: Suggestions
No matter what your disciplines, you need your own personal lists.Collection: Discipline
An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.Collection: Quality
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.Collection: Littles
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.Collection: Jobs
Art thrives on a difference of opinion. My treasure is your junk, sort of thing. Life would be dull if we all agreed.Collection: Art
While this may seem peculiar, the combo of work and distraction leads to levels of innovation not often generated by structured, focused thinking alone.Collection: Thinking
So who are we going to blame for our disappointments and our failures?Collection: Disappointment
In life and art it's better to be an enthusiastic amateur than a jaded professional.Collection: Art
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."Collection: Art
God may work in light, but we mortals work in pigment.Collection: Light
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.Collection: Artist
Quality is always in style.Collection: Style
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.Collection: Art
No one is going to hand you an organizational chart. You have to hand it to yourself.Collection: Hands
While obsessive behavior may be an antisocial plague to societies and communities at large, it's total moxie when lone practitioners catch it.Collection: Community
As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master.Collection: Photography
Do something others will have the desire to plagiarize but will find difficult to do.Collection: Desire
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Bumps
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.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Eye
I have always found it a testament to the importance of painting that the first thing many people do when their home is on fire is to grab their paintings and then run out.Collection: Running
In the companionship of art we are all of a time. Early or late we are to be shared.Collection: Art
The overly-verbal artist is led by his understanding of things--rather than by direct observation of things as they are.Collection: Artist
A high price may be part of the mystique in selling difficult art.Collection: Art
As you do your work, you discover what you love to do.Collection: What You Love
Which is better--feeling good or getting good?Collection: Feel Good
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.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Imagination
By thinking you are cleverer and more talented than your buddies, many a career has been blotted.Collection: Thinking
Artspeak is an arcane writing style that can result in a vocabulary of obscurities... Today, some of the more spectacular examples are in artist's statements.Collection: Writing
Do not be frivolous with the gift of a day. Right now it's all you have. Yesterday is history.Collection: Time
We artists allow others to see through our windows.Collection: Artist
Factual titling satisfies and is pure by its lack of bamboozlement.Collection: Titles
Sentimental titles are the last bastion of scoundrels, and can add significant barf to an already barfy work.Collection: Titles
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.Collection: Fall
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?Collection: Jobs
For a lot of us drawing is a tyranny which impedes freshness and spontaneity.Collection: Drawing
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.Collection: Technology
Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings.Collection: Creative
The head governs, the heart assists, the body acts.Collection: Work
Whatever you do, don't let your system run you.Collection: Running
This evening, while signing my name on a painting, I was thinking I might stop signing my cheques.Collection: Thinking
Silent guns have virtue.Collection: Gun
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.Collection: Medicine