Daybook, Turn, Prospect

Book excerpt: “Anne Truitt’s frankness and intellectual curiosity about the hows and whys of a working artist’s life” (Megan O’Grady, The New Yorker) are compiled in this one e-volume of all three of her journals, the illuminating, inspiring record of reconciling the call of creative work with the demands of daily life. Anne Truitt kept a journal throughout her adult life, from her early years as one of the rare, celebrated women artists in the early 60s, through her midlife as an established artist, and into older age when she was, for a time, the director of Yaddo, the premier artists’ retreat in Saratoga. She was always a deep, astute reader, and a woman who grappled with a range of issues—moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual. While working intensely on her art, she watches her own daughters journey into marriage and motherhood, meditates on criticism and solitude, and struggles to find a balance in life. “Balance not stability is the source of security,” she says. Anne Truitt re-creates 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.