Why Makoto Fujimura Left New York City for the Country

CHRISTIANITY TODAY
By Daniel Siedell

NEW YORK---Cities have attracted artists, musicians, and writers for centuries. Patronage, an educated audience that values the arts, and, perhaps most important, a robust community of creative peers to encourage and challenge artistic practice, have made cities fundamental to the history of art. However, the artists and writers I've been thinking about recently have, at crucial moments in their careers, left dynamic urban centers for the country. And now Makoto Fujimura, after many years of working in and for New York City as an artist and creative catalyst, has moved his home and studio to an old farmhouse outside of Princeton, New Jersey, which he has come to call Fuji farm. [link]

5 Reasons Fujimura left NYC:

1. Experience the blessing of isolation. 
2. To experience exile anew, and do so alone. 
3. To restore his work into the larger, more diverse fabric of work. 
4. To think about paintings in the context of producing honey, milk, and getting the car to run. 
5. To connect with new stimuli and develop new routines, like long walks, early nights and early mornings, bird watching, building and shaping his studio, and the quiet.