Robert Genn: From the Haven - Gabriola

I find myself returning again and again to look at Robert Genn's artworks.
This particular work, From the Haven: Gabriola, is located in White Rock Gallery. Please click here

As with many of Genn's paintings, this one shows both delightful simplicity and a great palette,

I think what never fails to surprise me in Robert Genn's works is his exciting colour scheme. As a landscape painter, I thrill am intriqued at the variety of colours he uses in his treeline and in the sprighty looseness of his brush strokes.

But even moreso, he has the kind of artistic vision to use the element of surprise, be it an exaggerated play with light, or in this case by the presentation of the great painted beak which overhangs the scene.

You can learn more about Robert Genn's art and his bi weekly eletter, Painter's Key, by clicking here.

On Dealing with Depression in Painting, by Robert Genn

Morning on the Bay, Fredericks

"If your work depresses you, and depresses you more as you go, you need to get happy. Count your blessings. Count your winnings. Take a few minutes to fly the flag of optimism. I don't know about you, but I often feel I'm getting drunk on a painting. It's better to be a happy drunk than a mean one."

Robert Genn: 'The Painter's' Keys. Please click here for a bi weekly, free subscription.


I am sure that nothing frustrates a painter more than being hung up in 'nowhere land'. You think you know where you are going, but you find yourself off track, and the vision is gone - if it was ever there in the first place.

Speaking for myself, I don't know how many times I have found myself, trying to "work out" a painting by applying different colours, overpainting, adapting to unexpected changes, or impetuously (or maybe even creatively) straying down an uncharted pathway into a work.

Its during these moments of hanging in limbo that the black cloud can descend over the artistic process. My solution is to bide for time. Put the work away and return to it another day. The subconscious mind has a way of dealing with an unfinished painting, in its own time and manner. At worse, maybe the work was never meant to be? If such is the case then the experience itself is never lost.

Robert Genn - Master of Colour and Design

Robert Genn is one of Canada's foremost artists. He is an undisputed master of colour and design.

I found this painting and the following comment, written by Diane Mize in Empty Easel.com.

The overall bluish tone unifies, while purplish-red accents bring harmony throughout. Repeating greens set the visual path and give rise to rhythm. Emphasis results from the highlights in the water contrasting with the surrounding blue and dark gray rocks.

To see the Empty Easel page, this extract was taken from, please click here.

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Robert Genn: Langara Light.

click on picture to enlarge
Robert Genn: Langara Light
Acrylics. 14x18.

I love this work by Robert Genn.

There are so many things that appeal to me. The perspective of standing below this great pine tree and looking up, makes me feel small against the force of nature.

Robert lays his acrylic paint on with big, heavy, loose brush strokes. Its so full of atmosphere and mood that it had to have been painted on location.

There's a strong sense of impressionism to it. Langara Light isn't about photo replication.

The colour values bounce back and forth as you work your way down the backgound: grey to blue to white to light blue and the white turns back to grey which flows on to the bottom of the painting. Brr. This is cold stuff.

The focal centre is the island and the dominating pine tree. I like how it reaches up and up and busts through the top of his picture.

There's a clunkyness and a solidness and a heavy fistedness about it all.
His acrlyics are smeared on as heavily as oils and this style captures the brutal strength of the environment.

There's also a spirit of artistic, iconoclasm at work here. I mean, who would even think of painting rocks pink. Aren't pinks reserved for florals? But here's the stuff - this sense of anarchy gives a spirit of liberation to his work and this emphasizes the liberated, wild, remote location he paints.

Look too at the tree trunk. It does what tree trunks do. It holds the tree together. But this trunk is bright and light reflective. The heart of the matter is brightly lit.

There is a spirit of liberation in this work. The branches of the shrubs at the base of the tree are scratched hurriedly into the work, almost as an afterthought.

The uncontrolled, disorderly, cacophany of branches and twigs and scratches make this a pretty wild looking place to be.

The cool tones give me a feeling that Robert Genn painted this one, while wearing his thick outdoor jacket and pausing only to rub his hands and pour a drink of hot tea from his thermos.

Robert Genn at Lake O'Hara

I got to the beautiful Lake O’Hara lying in a rainbow sleep, under the steeps of Mount Lefroy and the waterfalls of Oesa. And there I realized some of the blessedness of mortals… I looked at the emerald and violet of her colour. It is emerald and malachite, and jade, and rainbow green, and mermaid’s eyes… These are some of the people who stand about O’Hara: Lefroy, Victoria, Huber, Wiwaxy, Cathedral, Odaray. I have memories of the clearest crystal mountain days imaginable, when we fortunates in the heights seemed to be sky people living in light alone.”

J.E.H. MacDonald
Group of Seven

Robert Genn on Artistic Self Criticism

Robert Genn is one of Canada's most accomplished painters, having gained international recognition with his genre, for the most plart being, subjects on Canada's West Coast. But, he has also painted in most parts of Canada, the United States, Central America, Europe, and Asia. Born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1936, he attended Victoria College, The University of British Columbia, and The Art Centre School in Los Angeles, California. Genn carries on the tradition of the Canadian Landscape with fresh, painterly techniques and strong design, often and especially exhibiting his devotion to painting by reducing grand themes to small panels painted in the wilderness he loves.


source: Mayberry Fine Art, http://www.mayberryfineart.com/artist/robert_genn/


"Evolved artists compartmentalize their confidence. They tend to be audacious at the primary easel and critical at the secondary easel. Allowing themselves the satisfaction of dissatisfaction, they stealthily check their efforts for the quality they seek. We all know of perfectly incompetent artists who never apologize for anything. This, too, is a form of self-delusion that sends a lot of substandard work out and about.

The real art is to develop the skills to vet your art prior to its completion. Clarifying and isolating elements in the work that may need revising--and doing so verbally--is not a bad thing, even in front of others.

The first trick is to identify those elements that are fixable and those that are not. The second trick is to know how to fix the bad stuff without losing the audacity you had in the first place. The third trick is to know it's all an illusion, and with the help of your devious creative mind you have once more done the best you can under the circumstances. The fourth trick is to avoid the trap of perfectionism. At some point you must abandon all your façades and get on with the next project, no matter what your wife says. "

Source: Robert Genn:

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Winston Churchill Artist

I did a bit of online searching to see what I could locate on Winston Churchill, artist. Churchill painted at his country home, 'Chartwell'. His wife Clementine said that he never even been in an art gallery before he took up painting. Although Churchill did study under an artist friend, Robert Lavery. In 1921 Churchill sold 3 landscapes under the pseudonym of Charles Morin, at a Parisian artshow. Check out this website for an interesting article on Churchill as an artist: http://www.winston-churchill-leadership.com/winston-churchill-painting.html. Churchill presented his painting Marakesh as a gift to President Harry Truman. This picture was later put up for public auction by Truman's estate. Sotheby's sold it for for 468,500 pound, or about $1,000,000 US.

For additonal information, see Robert Genn's Painter's Key: http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/churchill.asp and reader's comments on the subject: http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/churchill.asp

The Grombich website, from the UK lists in an article on this url: http://www.gombrich.co.uk/showdoc.php?id=15, the following items.