Celia Paul · Diary: Painting in the Dark

I come back to this piece again and again as it is by one of my favorite painters about a favorite painter, a a favorite writer, and potatoes: "Gwen John sought out a life of solitude, a life lived in the shadows. Charlotte Brontë likened her writing process and that of her sisters to potatoes growing in a cellar. I know that women possess this particular power of interiority and silence. Perhaps the great women artists are nocturnal creatures who prefer to create freely in the darkness. In this way, too, they avoid being referred to as ‘one of these neurotics’. Perhaps they choose their overshadowing? If they go unnoticed they can be as madly inventive as they like, without making anyone jealous."