This was really inspiring and encouraging. I feel the same way right now. I have a list of stuff, and Iā€˜d love to retreat more and just work work work, but then on the other hand there is summer right now and with it comes a lot of expected social function to attend or more potential to spend time outside. But I just want to create and itā€˜s literally eating me up from inside at times when I cannot ahhh!
What Agnes Martin actually meant by ā€œworking with her back to the worldā€ is not that she wanted to retreat from the world. (Though she very much did so.) But that her art didnā€™t represent the physical world, but her inner world. Her paintings should extend your perception to the awareness of beauty around you, but more than anything else to the recognition of beauty within you. She said that because everyone knows what beauty is, all she needs to do is ā€˜bring the subject upā€™ rather than make it herself.
Mhh, yeah I just realize that they talk about inner retreat even in the headline and so on, still when reading this I thought that also some good old physical solitude was meant by it. Inner retreat, Iā€˜ll think about it moreā€¦