Voices of Experience - Robert Genn

Cobalt Lake in the Bugaboos 16 x 20” Acrylic

You have been writing your very popular “Twice-Weekly Letter” for artists for 12 years now, which is an amazing run. What made you decide to start doing that?

Shortly after the publication of The Painter’s Keys, A Seminar with Robert Genn (1997), I was on a painting trip in Spain, and I got 20 emails about my book from folks who had read it. My daughter and her boyfriend were traveling with me, so I asked them if we could send the same letter out as a response to everyone who had written. We found an internet cafe, typed out a letter and sent it out. That was the beginning. I quickly realized that this was a great way of communicating with people and would allow me to teach on a personal basis. After all, a lot of artists are pretty private, rugged individualists. We now have about 50,000 direct subscribers, but another 250,000 people pick it up on other sites, etc.

Isn’t the Letter a tremendous amount of work?

It …