Brain Food #535
A part of the world, but withdrawn from it
Thoughts of the day
The notion that a maker requires privacy or isolation to be productive is not little known. That is also why there is an ongoing interest in artists’ studios, writers’ rooms, the spaces that the world’s greatest creative minds used to make some of their masterpieces.
But perhaps it is not so much what can be found within the space itself, but rather what has been left out, that fuels this work. Research regularly confirms that reading the news can be detrimental to mental health, and if making requires clarity of thought (with a touch of positivity), and being in touch with oneself, then focusing on what is beyond our private space, both physically and mentally, only sets us up for failure.
Perhaps what truly matters here is the idea of being alone with our thoughts, indifferent to the universe, both its doings and its opinions. In isolation, we remain unaffected, a part of the world, but temporarily withdrawn from it. And this also signifies a withdrawal from the sins of comparing ourselves to others, catastrophising about what may be, but also the seemingly innocent act of interruption, even from a loved one.
Agnes Martin, her art not often understood or fully appreciated, preferred a life of indifference, culminating in the summer of 1967 when she fled the buzzing -and highly disruptive- social life she had in New York, to reappear in New Mexico.
She cherished her studio and disliked it when people visited her there: “If you live by perception, as all artists must, then you sometimes have to wait a long time for your mind to tell you the next step to take… When you’re with other people, your mind isn’t your own.”
What Martin’s lifestyle suggests is the importance of having somewhere to return to when it’s time to create, where one can be alone, and focused, to reclaim our minds:
“I paint with my back to the world.”
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