Who influences you? This question pops up incessantly—and I always find it very hard to answer. Maybe it’s the problem of my own monkey mind. Still, I am inspired by so much, so many—painters, yes, a list too long, but also composers—John Luther Adams’s light and sound installation, The Place Where You Go To Listen, writers—Calvino’s mysterious Invisible Cities, craftspeople—the Gee’s Bend quilt makers with their skilled improvisation. And film makers—Paolo Sorrentino broke my heart with The Great Beauty and then again with his memoir, The Hand of God. And Agnes Varda, in her old age, exploring the worlds of ordinary people in Faces, Places—a wise woman both direct and oblique, grown into and beyond her art.

A studio visitor asked last week, “Beginners seem to always feel inadequate, suspecting that their work can’t ever possibly measure up. Do you ever feel that way?” 

Well, yes. Most days. 

Artists are always falling short of a vision that can’t quite be articulated. And that’s what keeps us going—the things we can’t yet see—the illusive not knowing.

I keep circling back to Varda. I am thinking of her words, as quoted by her dear friend, J.R., another muse.

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.

I take this to mean that there is what we see—which is amazing—and there is also what is present, but invisible—which may well be something else altogether.