Tip: Your Own Painting Recipes

A few years ago I did a demonstration for a group of artists and I took a friend with me who was not an artist. He sat quietly at the back of the room with his arms folded, watching what I did, listening to the questions. On the way home he said, "They are all looking for the secret, and the secret is that there is no secret." I had to tell him that there are secrets, and that they can and are picked up from other artists, and that artists can claim the secrets for themselves."

I recommend making up lists - or recipes if you like. In the heat of the job it is easy to forget the richness that you might bring to your work. Sergi Eisenstein, the great Russian film-maker, was asked about his method of directing, and he said, "Careful planning, and brilliant improvisation." When you go out with a script, you have an advantage.

Your lists should be your own personal lists. They would be of systems you use: plans, directions, techniques. They can be simple and obvious, or they can stretch your highest capabilities... These are items that I...think about when I am painting, and I try to improvise on them as brilliantly as I can. You will have your own list. That's what makes your work unique. You name the ideas - and you claim the ideas. They becomes yours because you have thought them through.

Robert Henri, who wrote the wonderful book called The Art Spirit, said, "There is no art without contemplation." When you come to an area in a painting you have the knowledge that you have thought about it before - your brush does not just wander aimlessly. You know how unsatisfactory it is to be in the middle of a work and have the feeling that you don't know what the dickens you're doing. You are in a mess. Whereas, when you use 'name it and claim it,' you can say to yourself, you are in the 'reflected light' area of the work, or you are in the 'warm against cool.' It seems so simple and obvious, but it is valuable.

From The Painter's Key, A Seminar with Robert Genn