Le Sigh {...read about this artist's daily routine...}
As the world around me here in East Tennessee awaits the first “polar vortex” of the season (coming next week), I find myself scheduling time to haul our beautiful potted olive tree inside, as well as a large, well established French lavender, a David Austin Rose, and a potted peony bush. All of it must be brought in before the winds howl any worse. I’m also attempting to plan for the inevitable time spent indoors. And I learned something about myself that I didn’t know before:
Turns out, I like my hot chai tea brewed so strong, that my lips tingle. I never knew. After a lifetime of sipping what must have been insipid chai. True story.
Anyway. I have a big show coming up March 1-3, and there are still some ideas I want to hash out on canvas.
As synchronicity would have it, I stumbled across a few descriptions of the routines of various artists. One in particular caught my attention - the routine of sculptor Anne Truitt - best known for her hand-hewn, then painted wood columns. Listen as she describes her typical day during a brief time she spent at an artist’s colony, one long-ago summer in New York:
“I have settled into the most comfortable routine I have ever known in my working life. I wake very early and, after a quiet period, have my breakfast in my room: cereal, fruit, nuts, the remainder of my luncheon Thermos of milk, and coffee. Then I write in my notebook in bed. By this time, the sun is well up and the pine trees waft delicious smells into my room. My whole body sings with the knowledge that nothing is expected of me except what I expect of myself. I dress, do my few room chores, walk to the mansion to pick up my lunch box (a sandwich, double fruit, double salad—often a whole head of new lettuce) and Thermos of milk, and walk down the winding road to my Stone South studio.
At noon, I stop working, walk up through the meadow to West House, have a reading lunch at my desk, and nap. By 2:30 or so I am back in the studio. Late in the afternoon, I return to my room, have a hot bath and dress for dinner. It is heavenly to work until I am tired, knowing that the evening will be effortless. Dinner is a peaceful pleasure. Afterward I usually return to my solitude, happy to have been in good company, happy to leave it. I read, or write letters, have another hot bath in the semidarkness of my room, and sink quietly to sleep.”
I mean…just hush. The world has to know the beauty that would rush out of me, if this was my “typical day”. (I’d like to believe that, anyway!) It sounds too amazing to be true. But that’s how she lived, at least for a time.
You’d imagine, what with this so-called “empty nest” of mine, that my routine could be as close to that as I would ever be able to get at any other season of life, but you’d be imagining wrong. Still, I have a great deal more sovereignty over my time, state of mind, and schedule than I used to - and so if my creative work-time is not what I’d like it to be, the fault is entirely with me.
Time spent in the context of this Kingdom of God in which I function is a given. Literally, it is a given. (The Preacher is in full time ministry - I am not. I need to create for a living. It is often assumed that a pastor’s wife’s time is sort of thrown in for free, alongside her husband, and it is. I’m one of his most able assistants. However. I am very careful to have healthy permissions as well as healthy boundaries around all this. That’s a whole other conversation, though, isn’t it? )
I do not have access to a maid or a lunch-maker. And though I would love to spend an hour or so each day in the company of pleasant others - that hour always slides into more and more time, and I always feel that to keep it short and sweet - and thus sustainable for me - would be offensive to others. I rarely feel the freedom to simply say, “My social battery is now ready to be recharged, time for me to go” or, “I need to get back to work”. Because I rarely feel that the grace is available, I don’t get together with others as often as I would if I gave myself freedom.
No one else can give me permission. And no one else can revoke it.
These are actually profound thoughts, worthy of revisiting as I consider what 2024 could be, in my career as an artist.
Why not give myself freedom, and let the chips fall where they may?
I plan on sitting with the quiet, in honest consideration as to how I can make my own routine more effective, more organized, more social, more delightful, and ease-ful.
