Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Fine ARt Vol 4 No 3 March 2015

The Painter’s Keys
Robert and Sara Genn
The limitations game
January 23, 2015
“I am good at only two things,” said Claude Monet, “and those are gardening and painting.” The son of a grocer, Monet
knew he wanted to be an artist at age five. At forty-three he relocated to Giverny to build his garden. The cataracts
Monet developed as he aged limited his colour vision at the warm end of the spectrum. In 1923 he underwent surgery
to remove the cloudy lens of his right eye, leaving him aphakic -- a condition that allows a person to see normally
blocked ultraviolet wavelengths. With his new eye Monet mixed electrifying, revelatory blues.
I’m not recommending the removal of eye parts, but it’s worth exploring a limitation in search of its hidden edge. I remember
plopping into an alpine meadow once while Dad set up a video camera nearby. He sat in his homemade easel
and slipped into a familiar zone. I was noodling a few tuber-shaped glaciers onto the side of a battleship mountain in
too many strokes. In the cabin that evening we reviewed the tape.
“Would you look at those tight moves” Dad mused. What I saw were his relaxed, zen-like drags and dobs -- a floating
meditation. Over at the edge of the scene my elbow fluttered up and down like a one-armed weaver at a loom. I cringed.
He said, “I could use your dash and vigor -- And you should consider this: Look three times, think twice, paint once.”
The Painter’s Keys - Sara Genn
“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours,” wrote Richard Bach. We returned to the meadow the
following day and swapped techniques. “Easy does it,” I whispered, loading the brush, letting the mountain offer her
strokes and digging into a zone of special care. That evening Dad and I hung the day’s efforts and climbed under the
covers of our single beds for a cabin crit. Thrillingly my potatoes had become recognizable patterns of nature. Dad
praised the progress and I puffed like a lovebird, but then he motioned toward the paintings on his side of the room.
There dazzled light and speedy poems -- and the magical hand of abstraction.
Sincerely,
Sara
PS: “The vistas of possibility are only limited by the shortness of life.” (Winston Churchill)
Esoterica: Consider this: Limitations are an access point for focus, discipline, resourcefulness and the development of
voice. They’re clues to uniqueness and form-style and point of view -- requirements of all works of art to communicate
and connect. “In abandoning the vagueness of the sketch,” wrote Eugene Delacroix, “the artist shows more of his personality
by revealing the range but also the limitations of his talent.” We fear our limitations will define us, yet they’re
the hurdles necessary for refinement and courage. They’re the builders of character, and paintings need character. “The
greatest progress in life,” said Yogi Bhajan, “is when you know your limitations, and then you have the courage to drop
them.”
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