Life v Art: a postscript to my last blog post …
Reconcilation: reuniting, reunion, bringing back together again, pacification, resolution, appeasement, placating
I’ve read Anne Truitt’s ‘Daybook’ a lot over the past few years – it’s very much a ‘go to’ book for me. It resonates a great deal and is particularly relevant to my last post here which I wrote just a day or two ago …
‘Experience tells me that it’s best to just give into things – give up on plans to make any work until the proverbial storm has passed. But that’s all much more easily said than done, as so many artists know – that perpetual nagging feeling about wanting to be making work, versus the feeling that you ought to be somewhere else – a tension around what we should be doing, as opposed to what we want to do.’
Anne Truitt speaks for many artists – women artists and mothers, particularly. It’s an easy to read, accessible book, Truitt telling it like it is in all things associated with life and art – and the effort required to find a balance between the two – to excel at both, even.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh describes Truitt’s ‘Daybook’ as ‘a remarkable record of a woman’s reconciliation of art, motherhood, memories of childhood, and present-day demands.’
The word ‘reconciliation’ mentioned in Morrow’s quote (on the book’s front cover) resonated more than ever in a week of trying to bring together so many different strands of life – wanting to make work, to keep being an artist, alongside being as supportive daughter as I can to a currently unwell, elderly parent. Generally, to find a balance – to try and maintain an artistic practice at the same time as keeping up with everyday demands.
