bell hooks

Now reading bell hooks' book Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. In a chapter, titled "Women Artitsts: The Creative Process," she writes about the need for a room of one's own (see also Virginia Woolf's 1929 extended essay). I flashback to my days overseas: with the excitement of travel and the desire to take advantage of the experience, I made little time for reflection. my Female Expat Project was originally created to encourage expatriated women to do so. From hooks' chapter:

I think often and deeply about women and work, about what it means to have the luxury of time-time spent collecting one's thoughts, time to work undisturbed. This time is space for contemplation and reverie. It enhances our capacity to create. Work for women artists is never just the moment when we write, or do other art, like painting, photography, paste-up, or mixed media. In the fullest sense, it is also the time spent in contemplation and preparation. This solitary space is sometimes a place where dreams and visions enter and sometimes a place where nothing happens. Yet it is as necessary to active work as water is to growing things.