Robert Genn

Robert Genn was born in Victoria, British Columbia to an English mother and a Scottish father. He studied at Victoria College and the University of British Columbia, then in 1958 at the Art Centre School in Los Angeles.^[1] He painted landscapes throughout British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, New Mexico, and Western Europe.^[1][2]

He identified with and has been compared to the 1920s Canadian Group of Seven.^[3] In 1961, he met Lawren Harris who was a neighbour in Point Grey, Vancouver.^[4] Genn had problems with painting skies, and Harris's advice was to turn the picture upside-down: "Paint down from the trees to the clouds at the bottom of the picture to get the perspective right."^[4] Genn said this was "valuable advice", which enabled him "to control the gradation and work up into the trees in a more abstract manner."^[4] He was a practitioner of plein air painting, and he liked to set his easel in the same spot as his predecessors, such as J. E. H. MacDonald in the Canadian Rockies.^[2]

Genn ran the Painter's Keys website, a worldwide artists' community, with his staff and volunteers. The web site sends out a free twice-weekly newsletter, which is sent to 135,000 artists in over 100 countries,^[5] and claims the largest collection of art quotes online with over 5,382 authors quoted.^[6] His "Ten Commandments of Art Pricing" on his web site (reprinted on About.com) advise starting cheaply, raising prices slowly, keeping them the same for all purchasers and pricing by size.^[7]

In 2005, Genn campaigned against the Chinese website arch-world.com, which was selling thousands of high-resolution images of around 2,800 artists' work illegally without permission.^[4][8] After failing to gain support from the Canadian government or the Chinese embassy in Ottawa,^[4] Genn used his web site to enlist subscribers' support to email objections to the arch-world, resulting within days in over 1,000 online complaints from artists, dealers and politicians^[8] to the company and governments.^[5] This stimulated a diplomatic protest letter to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, Trading and Law Department from the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.^[5] Genn credited the campaign with the subsequent removal of images by 800 Canadian artists from the arch-world,^[4] although many works were reinstated on arch-world soon after.^[8]

Genn was a member of the board of directors at Emily Carr College of Art & Design.^[3] In 2006, a retrospective of his work, consisting of 16 paintings sourced from across Canada, was held at the Surrey Art Gallery.^[9][10]

Genn announced in his Twice-Weekly Letter of 25 October 2013 that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.^[11] He died at his Surrey, British Columbia home at 10:20 am on 27 May 2014 according to his daughter Sara Genn in the Twice-Weekly Letter of 30 May 2014.^[12][13] Several months after his death, four galleries across Canada held honorary openings of his work.^[14]

Genn wrote three books. In Praise of Painting (2012) is an illustrated autobiography of his early years. The Dreamway (1987) is an account of a meeting with a spiritual seer. The Painter's Keys (2000) is a handbook for painters based on one of his creativity seminars.

As of early 2020, 621 works have had auction sales.^[15] His work is represented by 12 galleries in Canada.^[16] Solo shows include Jenkins Showler Gallery, White Rock; West End Gallery, Edmonton; Hambleton Galleries, Kelowna, The Art Emporium, Vancouver;^[3] and Canada House Gallery, Banff, AB.^[17] He was one of the 60 elected senior members (SFCA) of the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA).^[18]

His work is in corporate and public collections, including Air Canada, Bank of Montreal, Canadian General Insurance, Canadian Airlines, Canadian Utilities, The Churchill Corporation, Expo '86, Esso Resources, First City - California II, Highfield Oil & Gas, Molson Brewery Ltd., Montreal Trust, Shell Resources, University of Alberta, Westgate Chevrolet,^[3] and the Government of Belgium.^[17]