Daybook

by Anne Truitt

The diary of the well-known sculptor, begun by Truitt with the determination to come to terms with the artist in herself, dramatically documents the links between her daily life and her work

Genres: Art, Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Diary, Writing

225 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 1982

About the author

The artist Anne Truitt was born in Baltimore in 1921 and spent her childhood in Easton. She lived in a house on South Street, just a block from the Academy Art Museum. She travelled extensively before eventually settling in Washington, DC. Her paintings and sculpture are noted for their simple linear qualities and investigation of color relationships.

Critics have often associated her with both Minimalism and the Washington Color Field artists, although like many artists she rejected reductive classifications. She had a successful career showing her work extensively in New York City and across the country.

Along with her art Truitt was noted as a teacher and as an author of memoirs: Daybook (1982), Turn (1986), and Prospect (1996). She died in Washington in 2004.

Reviews

[Caron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading this gem again. I like reading through Truitt's journal at least once/year. My favorite passage:

"My mother's moral force radiated from her like a gentle pulsation. Sensitive people picked t up and found her presence delicately satisfying...She was herself only when alone. I used to watch her brace herself for people; even, occasionally, for me. And then watch her straight, narrow back relax, her shoulders drop a little, as she set out for a walk. A few steps away from the house and her feet would begin to skim.

This satisfaction with being solitary was a tremendous source of freedom for me. It implied a delight in self and affirmed my own obsessive sieving of experience. By taking her mind totally off me, she gave me my own autonomy. I knew from experience that she was careful and responsible. I realized she would have watched me had she not been sure that I was all right. And, if she were sure, I could be sure. Very early in my life, I set out stoutly to look around at everything."

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The diaries of minimalist sculptor and painter Anne Truitt have been admired by writers from Rachel Kushner to Zadie Smith and Maria Popova. Daybook - the first of four published journals - represents Truitt’s attempts to come to terms with herself both as a person and as an artist. A process sparked by retrospectives of her work at the Whitney and the Corcoran. It opens in 1974, Truitt’s existence is now a stark contrast to what came before. During the fifties and sixties, she was married to then-prominent journalist James Truitt, trailing him from one assignment to the next including to Tokyo where he worked for Newsweek; in America she routinely engaged in supporting his position, entertaining politicians and celebrities including Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp and Dylan Thomas. But when Truitt’s journal opens she’s divorced, a process complicated by James Truitt's spectacular fall from grace linked to his reporting of the relationship between Truitt’s friend, and fellow artist, Mary Pinchot Meyer and John F. Kennedy - Mary’s later murder invited speculations about a possible assassination.

Although Truitt alludes to her time with her husband, she doesn’t provide much detail about this period, which seems strange since numerous passages are devoted to anecdotes from her past. A delving into memory that gives the impression she sees herself partly as stalled and partly as a work in progress: a woman alone in her fifties, sole support for three teenagers, who’s frantically engaged in constructing an identity outside of her ex’s shadow. Not that relationships between husbands and wives don’t figure here, there’s a series of rueful recognitions that expectations - instilled in countless women of her generation - of men and marriage as safe havens were pure fantasy. Although the fact that she ever viewed marriage as a path to security seems contradictory given her forceful portrayal of the fractured relationship between her own parents - made more so by her mother’s fragile mental state, her father’s dependence on alcohol, and the impact of the Great Depression on their once-secure household.

Memories of childhood pervade the journal, partly because Truitt’s now close to the age her mother was when she died, stirring up long-buried emotions and sparking fears of mortality. But at the same time there’s a sense of movement and creativity, reinvention seems intrinsic to Truitt’s history. It’s laced with sudden shifts and swerves. Her university education was initially derailed by a burst appendix – recuperation consisted of sports at a psychiatric hospital where she played volleyball with Zelda Fitzgerald – then she moved between studying psychology and nursing during WW2 to writing poetry to marriage, motherhood and to making art. Now she’s close to reclusive, severed from the art community, her work in a garden studio competes with caring for her children. There are brief spells elsewhere, the well-known Yaddo retreat offers a chance of silence, and care that reminds her of being a small child. But there’s always an underlying tension between her selfhood, her role as a mother, her creative desires and the wider demands of an increasingly commercial art world. A tension intensified by recurring periods of overwhelming financial precarity.

Alongside the more personal, intimate aspects of Truitt’s journal are insightful reflections on art and gender, on the role of art in wider society and the mismatch between artists and the perceptions of their audiences. Truitt’s fluid entries combine to provide a tantalising snapshot of a woman too unconventional to be fully subsumed by postwar domesticity, yet cut off from the growing feminist rebellion brewing elsewhere in 1970s America. It’s a fascinating glimpse of the experiences and struggles of the woman artist in an era dominated by men. But it’s also a sobering one, since so much remains all-too-familiar from the shouldering of responsibility for everyone around her to feelings akin to imposter syndrome to aging, vulnerability, and growing invisibility. This edition comes with an introduction by Celia Paul.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Scribner for an ARC

Rating: 3.5

[Andrea Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although my life is different from Anne's I found many inspiring thoughts and ideas in her writing. Her heart laid bare for a glimpse into the challenges facing a mother and artist. Creativity versus survival, doing something meaningful, what your life's work means to you. My internal landscape opened up as I was reading. The answers to our questions do come, but not on our timetable. I was moved by many passages, one of which I'd like to share. Thought provoking and heart awakening :

P.137-138 The idea of being protected by men dies hard. We had all (except perhaps Mary) given up the feeling that such protection is our right. But we all, in varying degrees, decreasing with age, cherished with some small hope of the idyllic warmth of male shelter. I have come even so recently as within the last month, to the verge of preferring to look after myself. This it begins to seem is financially possible.

There is such honesty and integrity in the words of this artist that I am only sorry that I never met her, for she makes me feel a sense of understanding about myself that I have never felt so strongly before. I had inklings of it in the past but now those thoughts and feeling are solidified in my heart and soul. There is a calm that has washed over me.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.”

American sculptor Anne Truitt keeps a loose-limbed diary, including thoughts about her work, inspiration, motherhood, ambition and provision, and it is a motivating record of a driven artist. She was once a nurse and trained as a creative writer, and both of her capacities for generosity and creativity shine through in this lyrical, finely crafted journal.

“During the question-and-answer period, I was asked where I thought art came from, from what part of the mind. I answered that I did not know but I thought it possible to put one’s self in the way of art much in the same way that cloistered devotees place themselves in the way of religious experience. Art comes, if we are blessed with what Jack Tworkov called a ‘little touch of grace,’ into the highest part of the mind, that with which we can know the presence of God. but we have to pay attention to that area in order to notice the grace, or even perhaps to attract it.”

[Ina Groovie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qué preciosura de registro de una artista que necesita poner en papel lo que no puede ver en el espejo. 🖤

[Rose Gowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

How I miss the Harvard Bookstore! I used to go in there all the time, even though I worked in a library, just to be surrounded by the stacks of crisp, fresh new books, and to see what was being published.

I find myself less rich in brand-new books, but since moving, my best book-buying experiences have been at church rummage sales, the library book sale, and the back room of the library. I like the way an odd selection can turn up something I've never heard of before.

I had never heard of Anne Truitt before I found this book in the library sale room. It comes to me at a good time; it's all about balancing the pressures of home and family against creative work, my current preoccupation.

It was tempting to stop listening to her when she explained that some of the tension was resolved by using her (but small!) inheritance to pay for a live-in maid when her children were little, but the real value and interest in this book are her explorations of the inner resources to go into mothering and making art.

She writes very well about coming into her own as an artist, (apparently) suddenly shifting from her apprentice work into her "real" work. The surprise of it; the delight, the relief, the wonder that it was there all along.

I love, also, the way she uses the word "hand." When her drawing is not going well, she says her hand is out; when she is able to draw again, her hand is in. When she returns home after being away, she says her house is coming back under her hand. There is more, but I can't remember. For someone who learns and makes meaning with her hands, "hand" comes to mean a force or quality.

She's a good writer. Here's a small bit that I liked:

"Balancing intuition against sensory information, and sensitivity to one's self against pragmatic knowledge of the world, is not a stance unique to artists. The specialness of artists is the degree to which these precarious balances are crucial backups for their real endeavor. Their essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse's neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again. When they find that they have ridden and ridden-- maybe for years, full tilt-- in what is for them a mistaken direction, they must unearth within themselves some readiness to turn direction and to gallop off again."

[Greta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book for many reasons. Anne writes like a poet, choosing her words so carefully and elegantly, one reads slowly in order to allow them to sink in gradually but thoroughly before moving on to the next thought. She writes of her lives: as a child, a student, a wife, a mother, an artist, a single parent, a grandmother, a woman. She writes of her thoughts, feelings and experiences in such a way that help you understand her art, her decisions, and her relationships, but especially her sculpture and her need to make it. And she wrote so many thoughts I wish I'd been able to articulate myself. I found myself taking notes of her musings on art and parenting. One of my favorites is: "It is such an act of courage to put pencil to paper that I begin by honoring the artist's intention." I honor Anne for the courage to write with such openness, honesty, and insight.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book about 16 years ago...hard to believe! I enjoyed it again but it made me sad this time. When the book ends with her last journal entry, she is 60, single and her children have all left to live their own lives. She has started lecturing about art but is winding down with her own work. Maybe because I am at the age I identify with her more than I did the first time I read this. Her art was difficult for me both times I read her book because I was not moved by what she was doing. But she herself was very passionate about her work! How do we really know when we are expressing ourselves if it is important or valid?

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my book club and found the author's reflections on creativity and the challenges of a career in art very interesting, if sometimes slow going. I wasn't familiar with Truitt's art, and this made the sections on her process confusing. I was able to find plenty of pictures of her work online which helped, but I would have loved an illustrated edition (don't know if one exists). I think artists would get the most out of this book, with the caveat that she benefited from a privileged family background that seemed to open a lot of doors (of course alongside challenges as a woman artist).

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous.

[Mind the Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tröst, styrka och kreativ inspiration. Fint lässällskap under många septemberdagar i parken eller kvällar i fåtöljen. Detta är konstnären Anne Truitts dagbok från slutet på 70-talet en bit in på 1980.

"Yesterday restless, restless."

"I feel a vague yearning today."

"I have been having a difficult time in the studio."

"Yet in that dim room I made sculptures of more brilliant color than I have ever before."

"... the waywardness of my weaknesses tires me."

"I often distance myself."

"I am enjoying the process of lithography."

"A subtle crack between myself as an artist and myself as a human being worries me."

"... there were no sales."

"I dread the lecture at the University of Maryland..."

"The New York exhibit opens in a few days. It's the old pitcher to the well again."

"Even the most fortunate have to adjust the demands of a personal obsession to the demands of daily life."

[Krysthopher Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qué alegría empezar el 2025 con Daybook. No estaba familiarizado con el trabajo de Anne Truitt por lo que celebro esta reedición de Chai que me acercó a su obra. Un diario de artista muy sensible, un mapa de emociones y pensamientos en torno al arte, las dificultades económicas, la maternidad y el envejecer. Subrayé muchos fragmentos y llené de corazones varias páginas 🤍

[Víctor Soho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adoreino. Poucos diarios estimuláronme e conmovéronme tanto como este. Estou sorprendido de todo o amor que lle demostro, porque non soporto ler a artistas falar sobre si mesmes, xa que tenden a ser xente bastante gilipollas e, ademais, moi pouco interesante intelectualmente. Tamén é xente pouco capaz de crear ningún tipo de intimidade, pois hai unha impostura, a da lenda do artista, que se defende sobre a vulnerabilidade real que toda persoa garda nos seus espazos íntimos. Aquí non atopei nada diso, se cadra a miña sorpresa ven de ter atopado todo o contario: o proceso artístico inscrito na propia vida, como unha actividade máis a realizar dentro de todos os deberes que ten que realizar no día a día —limpar, facer a colada, mercar alimentos...—. O acto creativo non se volve excepcional, senón que vive dentro da orde do día a día.

---

"En definitiva, el mundo está atestado de objetos. Las ideas en mi cabeza son siempre más radiantes que lo que está bajo mi mano. Pero hay algo puritano y obstinado en mí que no acepta ese límite. Hay que escribir el poema, pintar la pintura, forjar la escultura. Hay que hacer las camas, preparar la comida, lavar los platos, lavar la ropa y plancharla. La vida me parece irremediablemente una cuestión de afrontar lo físico."

---

Acontece algo semellante coa forma na que fala das súas relacións persoais. Non hai ningún sentido de transcendencia nas súas relacións —comentarios e cotilleos sobre xente famosa, grandes nomes dos circuitos da arte, etc—. Nin unha separación entre as persoas do mundo da arte e o mundo ordinario. Moito menos unha distancia entre ela como artista e o resto de persoas que lle rodean. Non hai unha altura coa que mira ao mundo, senón que participa nel dende o cansancio da rutina e o traballo, dende o desgusto e a comodidade das múltiples relacións humanas que lle rodean, do livián, pero encantador dos pequenos acontecementos domésticos. Non se percibe como excepcional, de feito, dubida diso, de recibir admiración, de que alguén atope algo extraordinario no que crea. Ao mesmo tempo, logra isto sen ser cínica, se non apreciar o alucinante que pode ser ás veces o proceso creativo, o fatigoso e as súas particularidades.

Nunca me percibo como artista ou cineasta, nin nada desas cousas, pese a que é de onde gañei máis cartos na miña vida —e iso que traballei durante meses de repoñedor nun súper, de pastelero, de camareiro...—. Sobre todo porque atopo moi irritante as formas que esta xente ten de presentarse ao mundo, formas coas que son incapaz de identificarme. Aquí atopei ferramentes máis amables, máis humanas no sentido de quitarlle o idílico e o heroico ao acto creativo, coas que podo entender mellor a relación que teño coa miña vida. Foi un pracer lelo.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the back of my old ratty copy of Daybook: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt I wrote, “What comes to mind when I read this is gentle. Despite its harsh and jarring realities, it feels gentle.” I don’t know when I wrote that, nor do I remember writing it but as I finished the book and found that page, I realized it was true. Anne Truitt was a sculptor and a mother and her journal consisted of entries on how to be an artist and a mother, how to be an artist at all, what it means to be an artist, to work with your hands, to create something outside of yourself that holds your soul. The taxing, laboring, energizing, rewarding thing of being an artist. My heart got really soft when she spoke about being a mother, and growing old and growing apart from her children, and what it means to be an artist and a mother, and how they can feel like two different identities, and sometimes she thinks the child needs more than what the artist can give. And then she also writes about what it’s like to be a grandmother, to grow old while someone brand new is coming into earth. She said, “In some similar way, as peacefully as I can, I must reduce my territory in the lives of these people most dear to me in the world.” I thought of my mother and all our mothers, that inevitable reducing they must do as the children expand and grow on their own. How hard that must be, how many tears they must have to swallow. For some reason we regard mothers as superhuman figures who don't have emotions, maybe we regard a lot of people that way, and when she wrote the simple sentence, “My feelings were hurt.” I felt it profoundly. Simple. But despite any hurt feelings, and the demands of motherhood she had so much drive and ambition, and desire to always pursue her craft. “If I wish to be responsible to myself, and I do, I have to pursue my aspirations.” She reminds us that we must remain independent to survive, that doesn’t mean isolation but when everyone is gone for whatever reason we have to be able to move on, to work, to create, to do something with our hands, to live.

[cass krug · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is like journal of a solitude, but for visual artists. anne truitt was a sculptor and painter, and in her journal she is grappling with her career progression, aging, family life, and the artistic process.

the latter part of the book where she discusses her children becoming adults with their own lives and her struggle to separate her identity as a mother from her identity as an artist was really thought provoking. a lot of books i read deal with a younger woman deciding whether or not to have children, so the perspective of a woman in her 50s contemplating the “second birth” of her children into adulthood was a fresh perspective. i especially loved her musings on her daughters becoming mothers. made me think about my own family’s dynamics as my sister and i are getting older and going out on our own.

i enjoyed the way she moved backwards in time to different episodes from her past, and the way she contemplated the future. she was very realistic and upfront about her financial struggles, even as an established, exhibiting artist.

my reading experience of this wasn’t great but that’s on me - i was having a hard time focusing and staying awake while reading it, not because it was bad, but because i was personally just exhausted. however, i struggled with this from a sentence structure standpoint occasionally. not sure if it was just the style of the time but i had difficulty following her train of thought in certain sentences and found myself rereading sentences often to try and comprehend what she meant.

reading wrap up!

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed and learned from this book. When I got it I knew nothing about Anne Truitt and had not seen her art. When I looked her up online and saw her sculptures I admit I did not understand them and was not impressed. But, in reading this journal I learned about her view and understanding of them and that gave me a greater appreciation. The journal is thought provoking because she is constantly balancing her "selves": woman, mother, artist and delves deeply into those selves. I think it will really require a second reading to reach to the depths of understanding that she comes to for herself. ( And I really hope to be able to see her work in person).

[Amber V.2.0 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It is a diary of the author’s thoughts as she juggles her role as a Mother of three with her art.

Her struggles between being a Mother and artist are insightful.

Her review of her own life is fascinating as she becomes recognised for her work and as her children grow and leave the nest.

I’m looking forward to re-reading it in case I missed anything on the first read.

[Jinjer · Rating 3 out of 5]

She writes too much about her art. LOL

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread after a conversation with M. We were talking about Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, and I said she reminds me of Anne Truitt, and to some extent, May Sarton. So I brought out this book again.

Some of my favourite excerpts:

"...In a deeply unsettling realization, I began to see that I had used the process of art not only to contain my intensities but also to exorcise those beyond my endurance, and must have done so with haste akin to panic, for it was a kind of panic I felt when once again inexorably confronted my own work...It was as if the artist in me had ravished the rest of me and got away scot-free..."

—

"These feelings made no sense to me until I came slowly and painfully to the conviction that, although I had been scrupulous in trying to integrate the other areas of my life, I had avoided confrontation with the artist.

This anguish overwhelmed me until, early one morning and quite without emphasis, it occurred to me that I could simply record my life for one year and see what happened...[I] began to write, sitting up in bed every morning and writing for as long as time seemed right. The only limitation I set was to let the artist speak. My hope was that if I did this honestly I would discover how to see myself from a perspective that would render myself whole in my own eyes."

—

"My first, instinctive reaction to this new situation was, if I'm an artist, being an artist isn't so fancy because it's just me. But now, thirteen years later, there seems to be more to it than that. It isn't 'just me.' A simplistic attitude toward the course of my life no longer serves.

The 'just me' reaction was, I think, an instinctive disavowal of the social role of the artist. A life-saving disavowal. I refused, still refuse, the inflated definition of artists as special people with special prerogatives and special excuses. If artists embrace this view of themselves, they necessarily have to attend to its perpetuation. They have to live it out. Their time and energy are consumed for social purposes. Artists then make decisions in terms of a role defined by others, falling into their power and serving to illustrate their theories."

—

"The pain of poets seems to me unmitigated. They are denied the physical activity of studio work, which in itself makes a supportive context for thought and feeling. In my twenties, when I was writing poetry steadily, I heard the words at a high pitch. On the deep, full notes of three-dimensional form, demanding for its realization the physical commitment of the whole body, I floated into spaciousness. Using all my faculties, I could plumb deeper, without sinking forever."

—

"Artists have no choice but to express their lives. They have only, and that not always, a choice of process. This process does not change the essential content of their work in art, which can only be their life."

—

"One element is clear, however, and that is that the capacity to work feeds on itself and has its own course of development. This is what artists have going for them. From 1948 to 1961, I worked out of obsession, but obsession served by guilt: I felt uncomfortable if I failed to work every possible working day. In 1961, to my total astonishment, the guilt dropped away, replaced by an effortless, unstrained, well motivated competence that I very soon was able simply to take for granted."

—

"The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity. As in any profession, facility develops. In most this is a decided advantage, and so it is with the actual facture of art; I notice with interest that my hand is more deft, lighter, as I grow more experienced. But I find that I have to resist the temptation to fall into the same kind of pleasurable relaxation I once enjoyed with clay. I have in some subtle sense to fight my hand if I am to grow along the reaches of my nerve.

And here I find myself faced with two fears. The first is simply that of the unknown—I cannot know where my nerve is going until I venture along it. The second is less sharp but more permeating: the logical knowledge that the nerve of any given individual is as limited as the individual. Under its own law, it may just naturally run out. If this happens, the artists does best, it seems to me, to fall silent. But by now the habit of work is so ingrained in me that I do not know if I could bear that silence."

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Truitt has three books of her journal writing, this one I read second, after reading her third book. I like the simple format she uses in this book, it is organized by date. She spends time reflecting on her relationship with her children, in particular I appreciated this thought, "The increasing independence of the child has to be met and matched by an increasing independence of the parent. I have found no other way to render this separation healthy for all of us. And it has seemed to me that, since I am the parent, the burden of foresight and consideration lies squarely on my heart and intellegence."

Some other ideas that caught my attention:
"Rationalization is a form of desperation. It takes kindness to fogive oneself for one's life."
"Self-castigation is, like doing the right thing for the wrong reason, the most tempting of self-betrayals."

She reflects about art, "It is ultimately character that underwrites art. The quality of art can only reflect the quality and range of a person's sensitivity, intellect, perception, and experience. If I find an artist homing in on himself or herself, I bring maximum warmth to bear, knowing full well that the process is painful and lonely, as it is, susceptible to encouragement."

And to the question, Where does art come from? from what part of the mind?, she says, "I answered that I did not know but thought it possible to put one's self in the way of art much in the same way that cloistered devotees place themselves in the way of religious experience. Art comes, if we are blessed with what Jack Tworkov called a "little touch of grace," into the highest part of the mind, that with which we can know the presence of God. But we have to pay attention to that area in order to notice the grace, or even perhaps to attract it."

"The degree to which people are aware is the most handy yardstick for seeing where they stand. How closely have they held onto their capacity to know directly and in their own particular way? To what degree have they eschewed the preconception of social conditioning."

Excellent book.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not familiar with this artist's work and was led to this book through the Brain Pickings website. About halfway through I went online and googled some of her work to get a sense of what she was talking about regarding the controversy around one of her exhibits. I found the work inscrutable. I kept reading, though, because her voice as an artist, as a parent, and as a woman made me want to know more about how she saw the world and how she then interpreted it in her art. After finishing the book, I had a moment of clarity regarding one of her sculptures and I think I understand more now what the piece was designed to evoke.

Especially interesting to me is her description of seeing in her mind a fully formed but yet un-made sculpture. She consciously decided not to bring it into the world, but was surprised to see that another sculptor had created it some months later. She seemed surprised yet not surprised about this. Honestly, I took it as a good description that there is a higher mind and when it is time for something to be born, it will be.

[Mina Widding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Det känns alltid som att umgås med någon, när man läser dagböcker. I detta fall intima samtal om att vara konstnär, ganska befriade från de högsta och lägsta punkterna, ett stillsamt betraktande av en trygg och reflekterande konstnär. Det handlar också om moderskap och att bli mormor, och dessa roller i förhållande till den inre konstnären. Jag kände inte till hennes konst och vi är långt ifrån varandra uttrycksmässigt, men att läsa hennes dagbok upplevde jag inspirerande och betryggande.

[Michele Yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this 20 years ago and loved it even more for this second reading. Anne Truitt writes of artistic process and domestic responsibilities, and how each informs the other. Very thoughtful, honest and illuminating. A very revealing and fascinating look into the intellect and heart of an accomplished sculptor.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

An artist's journal, in which she muses on her childhood, inspiration, financial worries, medium, locales, etc. Very few interesting insights. While I'm sure this book helped the artist while writing it, it is an exercise in ego to have published it, in my opinion.

[Tom]

Great insight into the mind of a working artist/mother in the conceptual art world often dominated by men.

[Unigami · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be rather pretentious and boring. I read about 25% of it, started skimming, and then gave up. I'm not too impressed with her sculptures either.

[Clare · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really a very dull book. Writing is abstract and pretentious. After two efforts to read, I wanted to like it but just couldn’t.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Truitt was a minimalist artist (think carefully painted nine foot columns in white or various colors), and even now is represented by Matthew Marks gallery, 20 years after her death. She also had a degree in psychology, was a mother of three and married for some time to a journalist, a Newsweek bureau chief in Japan. She wrote and published four of her journals, and "Daybook" is the first compilation. I found most everything she wrote, true and in some places wonderful explanations of things I had pondered, but not put in words. She has a calm voice, even though many times she had no money at all and asked for loans from her gallerist Andre Emmerich. Toward the end of this book, she is figuring out how to conduct her older life. She reads Marguerite Yourcenar, for instance, remarking...that we live long enough to see that we cannot make the ends of our aspirations and our achievements meet. She believes that "work is the backbone of a properly conducted life, serving as one to give it shape and to hold it up." She talks about her artist being a separate person, keeping aloof and then taking matters into her own hands. And she talks about the loss of adaptability as she gets older, an inelasticity. "Mottles of rust" seem to catch on her usual smooth run of attention.
Most of this volume was written through her lifetime at various Yaddo Retreats. There is too much here to properly add to this review. It is a good book for affirming how creativity works throughout your life, influences or changes your work, and how this successful artist has dealt with the many pulls and requirements of life. She is grateful for keeping a journal that has revealed logic that then illuminated her days. May we all be so lucky.

[Abbey Hilder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous