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Turn: The Journal of an Artist
The second journal of an artist by "an extraordinary sensitive, intelligent, perceptive"--Doris Grumbach.
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Anne Truitt
20 books49 followersThe artist Anne Truitt was born in Baltimore in 1921 and spent her childhood in Easton. She lived in a house on South Street, just a block from the Academy Art Museum. She travelled extensively before eventually settling in Washington, DC. Her paintings and sculpture are noted for their simple linear qualities and investigation of color relationships.
Critics have often associated her with both Minimalism and the Washington Color Field artists, although like many artists she rejected reductive classifications. She had a successful career showing her work extensively in New York City and across the country.
Along with her art Truitt was noted as a teacher and as an author of memoirs: Daybook (1982), Turn (1986), and Prospect (1996). She died in Washington in 2004.
Critics have often associated her with both Minimalism and the Washington Color Field artists, although like many artists she rejected reductive classifications. She had a successful career showing her work extensively in New York City and across the country.
Along with her art Truitt was noted as a teacher and as an author of memoirs: Daybook (1982), Turn (1986), and Prospect (1996). She died in Washington in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 29, 2009
The artist grew up on the Eastern Shore of MD. Worked at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. All of her books are great but I think this one is the best. She describes the day to day issues of working as an artist. Anne speaks about the light on the Eastern Shore better than anyone I have ever read...
May 22, 2017
Reading the third of Anne Truitt's journals is a delight. She touches on many topics of being an artist who is growing older and meeting her new limitations. Yet despite this these years are rich with her experiences of travel, creation, and taking on administration of Yaddo Artist Colony for one of their years.
She speaks of after her first book came out and the toll it took on her in elegant terms, "I am trying to feel out the new topology that the publication of Daybook is drawing around me: enlarging dimensions with amoeboid edges sensitive to changing forces outside and inside myself; but I seem also to have developed up. To have become more visible, as if I were a hill that had swelled into prominence from some inner accrual of substance. What I must in honesty name achievement in the real sense of actualized potentiality has made a topographical change. The hill of my prominence is modest, in due proportion to the plain from which it has risen. Still, I am having to accustom myself to being visible instead of indistinguishable in a stretch of land."
She speaks of the "abuses of guilt" and "of the lag that sometimes exists, even for years, between an act and a realization that the act was wrong; of the surprise that realization can be, of the agonizing prick of compunction, the bite of remorse; and of how the habit of gnawing at oneself can lead to inanition so that addiction to one's own pain can block growth. We came finally to the purpose of repentance: the decision to learn from one's past in order to amend one's future."
She speaks of "insight preceded by humility": "I have noticed over and over that a certain sort of depression presages a jump in my perception of my situation or of my work. Perhaps insight has to be preceded by humility."
I also like her realizations that: "affection abides conflict." "Worry is a form of blasphemy, a substitution of one's own will for divine will." "Reproduction fatally weakens the force of art." That "home is the implicit promise of stabile continuation" and that "what human life is, a period of time during which one abides without the possibility of continuity."
One quote of hers that stands out near the end of the book: "I will die with the detritus of my history: the decay of mistakes made, of promises unfulfilled." Another, "We can no longer afford the expression of all privileges of individuality if we are to enjoy the kindlyness of family understanding." And, "By keeping on being what we most intimately are, we can continually redefine ourselves so that we become what we have not before been able to be. If we live this way, we surprise ourselves."
A good book for long term artists to read.
She speaks of after her first book came out and the toll it took on her in elegant terms, "I am trying to feel out the new topology that the publication of Daybook is drawing around me: enlarging dimensions with amoeboid edges sensitive to changing forces outside and inside myself; but I seem also to have developed up. To have become more visible, as if I were a hill that had swelled into prominence from some inner accrual of substance. What I must in honesty name achievement in the real sense of actualized potentiality has made a topographical change. The hill of my prominence is modest, in due proportion to the plain from which it has risen. Still, I am having to accustom myself to being visible instead of indistinguishable in a stretch of land."
She speaks of the "abuses of guilt" and "of the lag that sometimes exists, even for years, between an act and a realization that the act was wrong; of the surprise that realization can be, of the agonizing prick of compunction, the bite of remorse; and of how the habit of gnawing at oneself can lead to inanition so that addiction to one's own pain can block growth. We came finally to the purpose of repentance: the decision to learn from one's past in order to amend one's future."
She speaks of "insight preceded by humility": "I have noticed over and over that a certain sort of depression presages a jump in my perception of my situation or of my work. Perhaps insight has to be preceded by humility."
I also like her realizations that: "affection abides conflict." "Worry is a form of blasphemy, a substitution of one's own will for divine will." "Reproduction fatally weakens the force of art." That "home is the implicit promise of stabile continuation" and that "what human life is, a period of time during which one abides without the possibility of continuity."
One quote of hers that stands out near the end of the book: "I will die with the detritus of my history: the decay of mistakes made, of promises unfulfilled." Another, "We can no longer afford the expression of all privileges of individuality if we are to enjoy the kindlyness of family understanding." And, "By keeping on being what we most intimately are, we can continually redefine ourselves so that we become what we have not before been able to be. If we live this way, we surprise ourselves."
A good book for long term artists to read.
December 31, 2023
The artist’s writing feels like that of a woman from a much earlier era. It is formal, genteel, with many surprisingly poetic turns of phrase and fascinating insights about art, life, family and nature.
April 17, 2025
This is the second book in the series. It continues the themes started in ‘DayBook’ - such as balancing different parts of one’s life such as work and family although now Anne’s family has changed as she has grandchildren and less day to day domestic responsibilities as her children are grown up. This necessitates an evolution in their relationship. So her life has changed and she documents the changes.
The other theme which comes to the fore is her ability to see beyond her physical reality into the ‘other reality’. She acknowledges that her work attempts to express this ‘other reality’.
The other theme which comes to the fore is her ability to see beyond her physical reality into the ‘other reality’. She acknowledges that her work attempts to express this ‘other reality’.
November 8, 2022
None of these feelings had ever been conscious before. I continued to drive smoothly as they swept over me and away from me, leaving me quivering with the same kind of awe I used to feel when a baby quickened in my womb: respect for the movement of an unknown being. In this case myself, rearing out of my own depths.
March 15, 2022
Beautifully written, I’m really enjoying these books by Anne Truitt. She’s an established artist who is also a mother. In this one she is in her sixties and includes meditations on aging and having adult children and grandchildren. It’s a lovely book, I’m excited to start the final one.
April 15, 2024
I was lucky to get all three of the author's journals from my public library. There is a lot of repetition but that was okay because that implied the read could pick up any one and not be lost.
I learned about how a woman artist must balance work and family.
I learned about how a woman artist must balance work and family.
September 17, 2025
The second volume of Truitts journals is every bit as rich and thoughtful as the first. This is a woman who took her time in considering, in contemplating, and creating. It's a pleasure to read her thoughts about art, life, family and personal history.
June 4, 2025
4.5 stars
December 23, 2025
Love these journals - learn so much about the day to day practice of a successful female artist. Anne Truitt is a treasure.
June 21, 2018
this book is the epic of everything every part of the catches you I recommend it too
December 19, 2016
intimate and insightful, i find a gem in every page. i will keep it beside my bed for re-reading every morning.
July 1, 2015
In elegantly crafted language, artist Anne Truitt examines many spectrums of her life. She was not an artist I was familiar with, so I did a little visual online research and learned that she is known for her minimalist painted tower sculptures. She coated them with as many as forty layers of paint, patiently sanding and working with colors to achieve the pure effects she dreamed of. This is the second of three memoirs, the only one I've read. I wonder what the third will be like since her mind was already very much preoccupied by aging (she is in her early sixties when this was written) and mortality herein. Other subjects she ruminates on include family, marriage, travel, other artists and her ex-husband's suicide. Turn has weighty substance, reflecting the mind of an artist I'd very much like to spend more time with. Truitt lived to be 83 and we are blessed that she left such thoughtful books behind.
March 21, 2015
I really loved Anne's "Daybook" but this journal about her growing older and her trip to Europe was disjointed and b-o-r-i-n-g, sadly. I was hoping her artistic flair for writing would have continued into old age.
September 26, 2018
The Los Angeles Times Book Review chose Prospect as one of its Best Books of 1996 In her widely acclaimed earlier memoirs, Daybook and Turn, Anne Truitt charted her life as an artist, mother and teacher. In Prospect, Truitt looks at the far end of her life
July 19, 2007
In her words...
"The community of artists, greater and lesser, can be lived in as an atmosphere, nourishing as air."
"The community of artists, greater and lesser, can be lived in as an atmosphere, nourishing as air."
December 7, 2007
I loved this book. Or as much as I could get to before I left it behind at someone's house who claims he never found it. Ha.
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July 20, 2012Anne Truitt's journals gave me the courage and insight to keep on writing.
August 13, 2025
Reading these feels like taking a Vicodin, in a good way.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews