Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Letter
Insight and inspiration for your artistic career.

Dear Artist,

In "Lake Wobegon Days," Garrison Keillor writes, "I grew up among slow talkers, men in particular, who dropped words a few at a time like beans on a hill, and when I got to Minneapolis, I was not considered too bright, so I enrolled in a speech course taught by Orville Sand, the founder of Reflexive Relaxology, a self-hypnotic technique that enabled a person to speak up to three hundred words per minute. He believed that slow speech deprives us of a great deal of thought by slowing down the mental processes to one's word rate. He believed that the mind has unlimited powers if only a person could learn to release them and eliminate the backup caused by slow discharge."

Of all the ologies, Reflexive Relaxology is one of my favourites. At the risk of losing friends, I'm a firm believer that a similar program can be applied to painting. When lecturing on the benefits of speeding up and labouring less, I've had grown men stomp slowly out of my workshops in disgust. Women too. "Slow painting" can infect anyone.

Fact is, speed itself unlocks the imaginative mind, increases idea turnover, aids facility and goes a long way toward avoiding dull disasters. As in many of life's lessons, habit plays a role, and habits, as we know, can be both unlearned and learned. Here are a few:

Change the word "painting" to "sketch" or "rough."
Take pride in your speed and facility.
Know that daring and audacity are virtues.
Know where your strokes will go, then make them.
Go here and there like a bee to flowers.
Do not overwork, overdo, overstate, or gild the lily.
Study your own time-and-motion strengths and weaknesses.
Combine artistry with efficiency.

While starting slowly may be necessary to understand and negotiate the banks and chicanes you will eventually take at speed, a simple exercise will speed up the process: Paint something that looks as though it was done in five minutes--but take a couple of hours to do it. With this ruse, freshness and better design appear like a genie. Further, joy happens when you work the "relax" part of Relaxology. Apart from the business of developing keen personal skills, nothing beats the feeling of simple joy.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "I have to get it out quick or I cool off." (Sergei Bongart) "The picture, as it's being made, follows the mobility of thought." (Pablo Picasso)

Esoterica: As in speech, if you think one thing at a time, there is only stammering and poor fluency, "like dropping beans on a hill," but when you habitually visualize the big picture as you lay down the individual strokes, the work flows in unity. We only need to look at our eloquence in speech. When we understand our subject, speech is automatic and facile, with proper pauses and emphasis as required; meaning is clear because we are thinking ahead of our words. Appropriate words (and strokes) fall behind in a fresh and natural way.

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