I’ve lived the past 4 years in a season of being alive in the realm of the public eye and in service of others' needs and desires. I’ve spent the better part of this time trying to make my business of being a bookshop owner a success. This month I closed its doors for good and will now surrender to the life of a working artist. It has been a great undoing. The loss felt deeply. Not a failure but neither a success. All of this on view through the windows of the beautiful space I created. A space for creativity and connection. And now as I step away I feel tremendous grief. Is surrendering always this painful? But now I get to come home.
I’ve been having an ongoing internal dialogue of what it means to be a working artist for the past couple of months. What does it even mean to be an “Artist”? In the realm of the “working” world, how do you reconcile the concept that as an artist, you are working in the realm of the “unseen”? Therefore, taking the time and the space to access that realm isn’t a privilege but a necessity.
I’ve always found inspiration in artists like Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt, not only for their remarkable work but also for their profound approach to their practice. Agnes Martin, a prominent figure in the New York City art scene during the rise of modern Abstract Expressionism, made a significant shift in her life after a decade in the city, choosing to return to New Mexico. After settling in Cuba, New Mexico, she found solace in the quietude of her surroundings, allowing her to reconnect with her practice and explore the link between the everyday and the sublime in her artwork. Similarly, Anne Truitt's artistic journey was marked by patience and introspection. Exhibiting her work for the first time at the age of forty-one while balancing the demands of motherhood, she found inspiration in the simple joys of daily life, as reflected in her journals. Both Martin and Truitt embody the essence of seeking the artist within oneself, and I've come to understand that true artistry transcends the individual standing before the canvas. It is arrived at when we are willing to have things stripped bare and accept that the roads we’ve been traveling down no longer serve us. The failures that bring us to our knees are the blessings that bring us to prayer, and it is in those prayers that we are able to surrender to the artistry that is beyond the ARTIST.
Agnes Martin wrote in one of her journals:
The silence on the floor of my house
Is all the questions and all the answers that have been known in
The world
The sentimental furniture threatens the peace
The reflection of a sunset speaks loudly of days.
Standing before a canvas now is an act of prayer, and a conversation, urging myself to be honest in a way that I have never been before. Am I willing to truly be an artist that seeks to converse with the unseen plane that lies within and how willing am I to allow it to change me? How willing am I to trust that it will always lead me down the right path? Am I willing to humble myself to the grace that creativity demands?
This past year I have found myself back in the presence of my practice, but I’ve been unwilling to be truly honest. I didn't realize this until recently when I was working on a piece. It was inspired by a room from a film that explores the interior lives of the characters. It was a film that visually is stunning, each frame a masterpiece of design and color. Muted and calm neutral tones that juxtapose the turbulent internal emotions that lie just beneath the surface of the characters. I'm drawn to interior scenes for that sense of calm and security. But my practice has relied on what I seek beyond me. I’ve been avoiding the inward journey. I’ve been fearful of placing my hand on the fire that burns within. I’ve been unwilling to have a real conversation with myself. I’ve sought the shapes and forms of the tangible and figurative to make sense of the intangible that I sense but have been too shy, too timid and too insecure to grasp. If true artistry is something which the artist is a conduit for and in service to, I have been pushing it away by ignoring the obvious.
I’ve often longed to create a space for myself in which I can have all that I require at my disposal to create, to write, to be. I look at how others have carved out space in their own lives and have been in awe of the bravery it requires to take up space. Now, as I carve out a room of my own to allow for my silent conversations, I find a longing for the calm that comes when I allow for simplicity to lead the way.
Often, the place that I return to again is the ocean. Looking out to the horizon line, to take in its vastness, to breathe in the salty air and the sound of the waves coming and going, in and out, I find myself now bringing that sense to my work. The rhythm of the ocean's tide is now the rhythm of my internal dialogue. I was looking up the etymology of the word HORIZON - which comes from the Greek word "horízōn," meaning "bounding, limiting," from "hóros," meaning "boundary, limit." In ancient Greek, "hóros" referred specifically to the boundary between the earth and the sky. And it struck me that as artists, our true work is being available to that which is unknown, but which exists between the earth and the sky, to conduit the true creative spirit that exists within this holy space. The boundary of this studio space that I now reside in has opened the door to the same feeling of freedom that the vastness of the ocean brings me. I have created a home for the art I wish to be of service to and a home for hope to blossom. A prayer has been answered.
Anne Truitt’s journal entry from YEILD April 5 Two Sculptures, sixty by five and a half by four inches, are almost finished. Two Lines of color and they will be done, probably by this time next week. I now sometimes have to sit down between coats of paint. I have the ice cream parlor chair I took with me from the 1928 Calvert Street Studio (before I built my own) with the pillow I made years and years ago with dark-blue-and-white-patterned Japanese cotton yukata material. I sit and watch the light move over the sculptures. The stored paintings and the uneven but lined-up rows of jars (peanut butter, molasses, jam) of leftover paint. I feel I am where I should be on the face of this earth.
READING LIST
DAYBOOK by Anne Truitt
TURN by Anne Truitt
YEILD by Ann Truitt
AGNES MARTIN: PAINTINGS, WRITINGS, REMBRANCES by Arna Glimcher
AGNES MARTIN: HER LIFE AND ART by Nancy Princenthal
FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE
THAT SUMMER by Peter Beard and Lee Radziwill
This film explores the lives of photographer Peter Beard and socialite Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In the summer of 1972, they conceived the idea of creating a film that would address the changes brought about by rapid development in East Hampton, Long Island, while also delving into the storied history of Radziwill’s family. However, upon their arrival, they quickly realized that the real story lay elsewhere—in the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale and Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, Radziwill’s aunt and cousin, who were living in squalor and virtual isolation in the dilapidated mansion known as Grey Gardens.
I found this film captivating for numerous reasons, particularly for its portrayal of how these women evolved into uniquely singular individuals through solitude and isolation. Their quirks and eccentricities fascinated and delighted me, adding depth and richness to their characters
ON REPEAT
James Blake - SAY WHAT YOU WILL
Homing In- Akram Khan, the poignant story of a man who found his voice through dance
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“Standing before a canvas now is an act of prayer, and a conversation, urging myself to be honest in a way that I have never been before”.
Absolutely beautiful. I look forward to this in all of it’s unfolding.
In the realm of the “working” world, how do you reconcile the concept that as an artist, you are working in the realm of the “unseen”?
This right here is a conversation I will be spending some time on.