'Daybook', the journal of American artist Anne Truitt, was one of the first books that caught my eye when I unpacked my boxes from store. It spoke to me the first time I read it, and re-reading it now was very moving.

She writes as a woman artist in an art world even more dominated by men than it is now. She writes about her sculpture and painting, and how her art making fits into the span of her life. She writes about her children growing up, leaving home, becoming adults.

I especially love how she describes a key transition in her life as an artist:

I saw my first Barnett Newman, a universe of blue paint by which I was immediately ravished. My whole self lifted into it. "Enough" was my radiant feeling -- for once in my life enough space, enough color ...

...I stayed up almost the whole night ... I decided, hugging myself with determined delight, to make exactly what I wanted to make... What did I know, I asked myself. What did I love? What was it that meant the very most to me inside my very own self?

I wrote out those 3 questions in my sketchbook. The answers will be found in the work.