Search Results: Robert Genn (1577)

Letters This is your country don't let the big men take it away from you, Kern County, California, 1938–1938 Gelatin silver print 12 7/8 x 12 1/2 inches by Dorothea Lange (1895–1965)
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Plodding through the New York Times Sunday crossword is a tiny perfect illustration of the notion that the only way to get better at anything is to keep going. Like a dancer in cement shoes, I tinker in a blind trust that the answers will come in a bolt of inspiration, my ineptitude crumbling away, mid-jeté. “Inspiration,” wrote Elizabeth Gilbert, “needs to find you working.”

Letters Na Kihapai Nani Lua ʻOle O Edena a Me Elenale (The Beautiful Unequaled Gardens of Eden and of Elenale) Hawaiian cotton quilt, before 1918, from the permanent collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art
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In his latest book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Eckhart Tolle discusses how the human mind is almost constantly engaged in private thoughts. These inner rumblings reflect our personal trials, dreams, needs and obligations. To function properly as a creative person, an artist must divorce himself from some of this clutter and begin a process of rebirth into another mode. “Even though people may travel,” says Eckhart Tolle, “they tend to remain where they have always been — in their head.”

Letters Tutto Andra Bene
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This morning I received a message from a collector friend: “Some people are lucky, like artists (with materials), readers, knitters, gardeners. It’s worrying about the galleries and everyone else. But I’m excited to see the creative output from this period. It would turn some of the devastation from this time into wondrous innovation. We’ll see.” Sequestered in my creation station, I’d just opened my eyes and was thinking of everyone on the planet doing some version of the same. I was quietly redesigning the world.

Letters Storm Over the Serpentine, Nicomeckl Estuary, 2013 acrylic on canvas 11 x 14 inches by Robert Genn
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A subscriber wrote, “I have recently been given an assignment by a mentor to paint, without restraint, 20 or so small abstract pieces that express the emotions of an illness I have been managing for years. I find myself stuck, stuck, choked with fear…emotion. I find myself not knowing how to visualize, begin to ‘show,’ express emotion. Usually it seems that feeling or emotion just shows up. To invite, command the same has me stuck. Does one just begin?”

Letters Diorama of Jackson Pollock in his studio (c. 2000-2019) by Joe Fig
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Model-making artist Joe Fig has produced a remarkable book, Inside the Painter’s Studio, in which he visits and photographs the studios of dozens of well-known New York contemporary painters. He also records each artist’s answers to a number of set questions, many of which are practical ones concerning studio layout, painting processes, work hours and habits, clean-up times, unique tools, titling, the use of assistants, and advice for younger artists. His second-to-last question, “Do you have a motto or a creed that as an artist you live by?” picked up a range of answers, both predictable and insightful.

Letters The Cradle, 1872 oil on canvas 56 x 46 cm by Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
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While mingling at an 85-year-old’s birthday party recently, I overheard a conversation between two artists: “How’s your work going?” asked the first. “It’s not. I haven’t picked up a brush in months,” said the second. “No time to paint.” They batted, back and forth, the creativity-hijacking perils of family, social obligations, sports, studio rent, Thanksgiving and the deadly word, “worthwhile” — as in, “I’m not doing it enough to make the sacrifices worthwhile.” The cake came, everyone sang, the candles were blown out and a wish was made. “The secret to life,” nudged our host, “is that you need to do what you really want to do.”

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