Daybook: The Journal of an Artist
Anne Truitt
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1476740984
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A classic work for artists of all kinds, about reconciling the call of creative work with the demands of daily life, now with a new introduction by Audrey Niffenegger.
Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal over a period of seven years, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life. Her range of sensitivity—moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual— is remarkably broad. She recalls her childhood on the eastern shore of Maryland, her career change from psychology to art, and her path to a sculptural practice that would “set color free in three dimensions.” She reflects on the generous advice of other artists, watches her own daughters’ journey into motherhood, meditates on criticism and solitude, and struggles to find the way to express her vision. Resonant and true, encouraging and revelatory, Anne Truitt guides herself—and her readers—through a life in which domestic activities and the needs of children and friends are constantly juxtaposed against the world of color and abstract geometry to which she is drawn in her art.
Beautifully written and a rare window on the workings of a creative mind, Daybook showcases an extraordinary artist whose insights generously and succinctly illuminate the artistic process.
Jan's Story: Love lost to the long goodbye of Alzheimer's
Christmas in Tanganyika: A Memoir
I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives
of death. The grocer purveyed provisions to my family. His wife was roly-poly and they were generous with oatmeal cookies kept in a glass jar on their counter. When I was a little older, I was able to go to the other side of the fence and look at it all closely. The house next door on that side was, in the higgledy-piggledy of a small town, the undertaker’s. His shades were always drawn right down to the sills, but at the back door there were galvanized garbage pails. I used occasionally to see
beckoned by Mrs. Lodge, who had opened the door and stood welcoming me, children clinging to her skirts with classic dependence, I turned. Behind her, to our mutually startled agony, loomed a classmate of mine at Easton Junior High School. She wore the voile dress as a blouse all the rest of the year. Taller than I, her thin, roughened wrists stuck out of the transparent frills gathered by the smocking. We, who had liked each other, never met one another’s eyes again. Behind my eyes she now
apprehension of the Arundel paintings, which depend for their perception on both foveal and nonfoveal vision. The lines in them are sometimes so widely spaced that they cannot be seen simultaneously, and the fields of white in which these lines act depend for their understanding on peripheral vision; that is, on the entire range of sight from all the way left to all the way right. Earlier this morning I was swept by waves of sorrow as imperative as the blizzard now blowing outside my window. A
She did her best to present all her selves—artist, teacher, mother, child, divorced woman, bread winner, and eventually grandmother—integrated or in conflict, as the events of the day demanded. She was born in 1921 and was associated with both the Minimalism and Color Field movements, but was quite independent in her development as an artist. In Daybook she describes her decision to become an artist and her training, which was figurative and grounded in the natural world. She describes a visit to
to James Joyce to Prince Genji to Tolstoy. Fresh spring peas drop from their translucent pods into my earthenware bowl; the iron clumps on the ironing board. We breathe in the crisp smell of freshly pressed cloth in the sunshine. Mary drinks apple juice full of nourishing pulp that we feel sure is welcomed by her growing baby, a silent third in our lively conversation. Mary remarks on the fact that all of Tolstoy’s characters are sustained by their work: Anna turns to her desk, Karenin to his
