agnes martin

My teacher Judy Glantzmann in NY first told me about Agnes Martin. Since then I have read her writings many times. But I hadn't looked into the book for many years now and just discovered it once again.
I'd like to share a passage from her text 'The current of the river of life moves us':

What we really want to do is serve happiness.
We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment. We want animals to be happy. The happiness of every living thing is what we want.
We want it very much but we cannot bring it about.
We cannot make even one individual happy.
It seems that this thing that we want the most of all is out of our reach.
But we were born to serve happiness and we do serve it.
The confusion is due to our lack of awareness of real happiness.
Happiness is pervasive.
It is everywhere. And everywhere the same.
And it is forever.
When people are really happy they say: "This will last forever even after death", and that is true.
When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds and we are not able to be aware of happiness. When the difficulty is past we find happiness again.
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all. It is not this or that or in this or that.
It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same. It does not appear and disappear. It is not sometimes more and sometimes less. It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.
In this life, life is represented by beauty and happiness.
If you are completely unaware of them you are not alive.
The time when you are not aware of beauty and happiness you are not alive.
When we see life we call it beauty. It is magnificent - wonderful.
We may be looking at the ocean when we are aware of beauty but it is not the ocean. We may be in the desert and we say that we are aware of the "living desert" but it is not the desert.
Life is ever present in the desert and everywhere, forever.
By awareness of life we are inspired to live.
Life is consciousness of life itself.
The measure of your life is the amount of beauty and happiness of which you are aware.
The life of an artist is a very good opportunity for life.
When we realise we can see life we gradually give up the things that stand in the way of our complete awareness of life.
We are guided to greater expression of awareness and devotion to life.
We recognize the great exultation with life of great artists like Beethoven and we realise that all artists praise and exult life.
The life of an artist is completely unmaterialistic, because beauty and happiness and life are all the same and they are pervasive, unattached and abstract and they are our only concern.
They are immeasurable, completely lacking in substance. They are perfect and sublime.
This is the subject matter of art.

Agnes Martin