A Room With No View

I just discovered this wonderful quote from Annie Dillard's "A Writing Life": "You need a room with no view so imagination can meet memory in the dark."

I have always felt "wrong" that I have no interest in traveling, the way everyone else seems to. It's not that I hate traveling, or that I have a fear of flying, or anything like that. I just prefer to be at home and enjoy what's around me here.

I know other artists who find their inspiration in travel, by attending residencies and/or drawing/painting while they're traveling. This seems to be the norm, and as I mentioned, I've always felt "weird" that I have no interest in either attending a residency or doing anything but look around me, unhindered by a sketchbook or camera, on the rare occasions when I do travel.

Art-making, to me, has nothing to do with recording where I've physically been. It means going to a quiet, isolated and familiar place -- which I make sure my studio is -- and expressing whatever is inside me: the abstract, the intangible, the intuited, the felt, the remembered.

Annie Dillard's quote articulates perfectly my interests as an artist. And she reminds me that it's "OK" to be this way!