Quote

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.

Robert Genn

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Robert Genn
Age: 78 †
Born: 1936
Born: May 15
Died: 2014
Died: May 27
Artist
Robert Douglas Genn
Looks
Painter
Work
Meant
Sight
Noted
Failure
Tiresome
Progress
Previously
Problem
Canadian
Able
Jackson
Look
Unseen

More quotes by Robert Genn

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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
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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
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Incompetence, in my books, is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow.
Robert Genn
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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.
Robert Genn
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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
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Dogs are angels sent from heaven in order to help us to be better people.
Robert Genn
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When shucked and released from its edges, the windowless subject stands alone as its own thing.
Robert Genn
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An abstract title suggests another value to the subject, perhaps an artistic quality that sets the viewers' sensitivities into action.
Robert Genn
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Priests are often well-meaning people who haven't yet looked too thoroughly into comparative religion.
Robert Genn
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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
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God may work in light, but we mortals work in pigment.
Robert Genn
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Drawing is still the bottom line.
Robert Genn
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Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.
Robert Genn
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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
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In the companionship of art we are all of a time. Early or late we are to be shared.
Robert Genn
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As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master.
Robert Genn
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As we grow older, we realize just how limiting were our earlier conceptions. Art is something else. Art is fluid, transmutable, open-ended, never complete, and never perfect. Art is an event.
Robert Genn
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Sometimes you have to go through something else to find what you're looking for.
Robert Genn
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By thinking you are cleverer and more talented than your buddies, many a career has been blotted.
Robert Genn
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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