Artist, Agnes Martin: Oh, I lived on Coenties Slip. It's down below Wall Street. And I had a view of the river and everything, and I paid $45 a month. Ellsworth Kelly was in the same building that I was in. He had the top floor with the skylights. And then just down the street was Indiana, Jack Youngerman, Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and then later came James Rosenquist.
I never felt really, satisfied with my work until after I went to New York and started the grid, which was absolutely abstract. When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees. And then, this grid came into my mind, and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do. So I painted it. I called the painting The Tree. But it was really about the innocence.
And other titles that I have given, it's really about a mental experience. I have a vision in my mind about what I'm going to paint before I start. I think when you come out of the mountains and onto a plane, it's a pretty exciting experience. It's the expansion that is related to the grid. You know, the expansion of that experience. It's about the infinite.
Archival audio from: Oral history interview with Agnes Martin, 1989 May 15. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.