I am going to work in order to see myself and free myself

 "Say to yourself, ' I am going to work in order to see myself and free myself.  When I see myself in the work, I will know that that is the work I am supposed to do.'"

 Enter my favorite book from/about/on Agnes Martin:

More excerpts:

To feel confident and successful is not natural to the artist.

To feel insufficient, to experience disappointment and defeat in waiting for inspiration is the natural state of mind of an artist.

This painting I like because you can get in there and rest.

Moments of perfection are indescribable but a few things can be said about them.  At such times we are suddenly very happy and wonder why life ever seemed troublesome.  In an instant we can see the road ahead from from all difficulties and we think that we will never lose it again.  All this and a great deal more in barely a moment, and then it's gone.

We cannot and do not slay the dragon, that is a medieval idea, I guess.  We have to be completely familiar with him and hope that he sleeps.  The way that things are most of the time is that he is awake and we are asleep.  What we hope for is the opposite.

Following inspiration, life unfolds free of any influence.

An artist's life is an unconventional life.  It leads away from the example of the past.  It struggles painfully against it's own conditioning.  It appears to rebel, but in reality, it is an inspired way of life.

...defeat is the beginning, not the end of all positive actions.

If you live according to human knowledge, according to precept, values and standards, you live in the past.  If you live entirely in the past, you will not know beauty and happiness and you will not, in fact, live.  You must believe in life,  Believe that you can know the truth about life.

To progress in life, you must give up the things that you do not like.  Give up doing things that you do not like to do.  You must find the things that you do like.  The things that are acceptable in your mind.

post script: It happened again.  Just like it happened yesterday (with Women Who Run with the Wolves).  I tapped the search bar, here, to reference my notes from this book and, again, turned up empty handed.  These particular excerpts were handwritten in my journal from May of 2020

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