Daybook

A beautiful new edition of the cult classic that counts Zadie Smith and Rachel Kushner among its fans – with a new introduction by Celia Paul.
 
‘I am an artist. Even to write it makes me feel deeply uneasy.’

Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal between 1974-8, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life.

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 colour 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 colour 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.
 
'Truitt wrote as she sculpted, returning to the past again and again to find fresh truths.' The New Yorker

‘This miracle of a book will inspire artists for generations to come.’ Celia Paul
 

Anne Truitt (1921–2004) had her first solo exhibition at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York in 1963. Her work is in the collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. The recipient of many grants, she was the director of the artists’ colony Yaddo for several years in the early 1990s.

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