Robert Genn

Robert Genn

If you are an artist and haven't checked out Robert Genn's newsletter, you have been missing out on an articulate accomplished artist's wisdom. For a long time I have felt that my art making is my spiritual work, that God steps in and guides me into other realms. Painting is like prayer work and this week Genn offers his prayer which says it all better than I can:

"The spiritual," said Thomas Carlyle, "is the parent of the practical." Many years ago I wrote myself a private prayer. I've repeated it in a couple of books and tacked it on the wall of my studio. Here, under the dripping cedar-boughs of a Queen Charlotte's forest cathedral, I find my prayer again on a folded paper down in the sticky part of a much-travelled paintbox. It contains the sort of innocent zeal found in many youthful conversions, but it's still welcome:

The world's engagement of beauty is my bible,

And Art is my religion.

I come to it as a child.

I add all the grown wisdom I can gather.

Creativity is my salvation.

My easel is the altar.

My paints are the sacraments.

My brush is my soul's movement,

and to do poorly, or not to work, is a sin.

Robert Genn