Anne Truitt American, 1921-2004
calling the series Arundel after the county in Maryland, near where
she grew up. Writing in Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, Truitt described her complex intentions and the deep emotional life she felt were represented in these seemingly simple works:
“In these paintings I set forth, to see for myself how they appear, what might be called the tips of my conceptual icebergs in that I put down so little of all that they refer to. I try in them to show forth the forces I feel to be a reality behind, and more interesting than, phenomena. I keep trying to catch the laws I can feel illustrated in phenomena: in meetings and just-not-meetings; in forces abutting, thrusting one against another, illuminating one another. A force is only visible in its effect, and it is the split second in which this effect becomes just barely visible that haunts me.”