Up: [[People]] Created: 2025-01-06 ![[Anne Truitt.webp|400]] SCULPTOR. DIARIST American — Washington D.C. 1921-2004 (83 years) [Anne Truitt Website](https://www.annetruitt.org/exhibitions) New Yorker article about Anne [documenting her life](https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-a-sculptor-made-an-art-of-documenting-her-life) ## How I First Learned of Her I’ve long been fascinated by inside looks at the lives of artists and writers. I came across Anne Truitt’s first journal, with the wonderful title of *Daybook*, many years ago and loved it. I’ve written many quotes from this book, especially ones that gave me hope that writing would bring clarity to my life. > [!Orbit] Anne Truitt in *Daybook* > I tried to be patient with the rhythmical unfolding of my writing, never to second-think it, and as the year went on found myself rewarded when a subtle logic began to emerge. I began to see how my life had made itself as I was living it, how naturally and inevitably I had become an artist. (p. xiii) ## Since Then… Anne Truitt published three more journals: *Turn*, *Prospect*, and *Yield*. I really like reading published journals and I especially like Anne’s because they are about the intersection between life as artist and life as daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. ## Anne Truitt through the Lens of Instructions for Life ##### PAY ATTENTION Anne Truitt’s turning point in her art career came from a single day’s visit to the Guggenheim. She looked at paintings by abstract expressionists Ad Reindhardt and Barnett Newman and said, *I was home free. I had never realized you could do it in art. Enough space. Enough colour.* Truitt’s sculptures, paintings and drawings were informed by memories and nostalgias of her past. ##### BE AMAZED Anne Truitt became very well known in the late 1960s for large, rectangular columns of pure colour. She would use up to forty coats of acrylic paint, alternating vertical and horizontal brush strokes and sanding between each coat so that the viewer wouldn’t see any brush marks. The columns were hollow, but so vividly painted that it was easy to imagine that they were solid pigment. ##### TELL ABOUT IT Anne Truitt had a degree in psychology and worked for a period of time as a psychiatric nurse. She also attempted to write fiction for a while before she started taking art courses. I think all of these experiences informed the honesty, the self-reflection and the flow of her journals. For all she tells of the thrill of beginning a new sculpture, she also talks about the toll that sculpting takes on her body; her financial worries, and events of her life, including her ex-husband’s suicide. As the New Yorker article suggests, Truitt is *often pushing to articulate something at the edge of discernment*. It’s very appealing.