Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip. 

Indiana's journal entry for January 11, 1959, covers two pages. In the second page the artist describes a new work, Four Spheres, painted in oil on a 14 5/8 x 50 inch panel. The page includes a sketch of four vertical orbs, which Indiana explains he left natural even though his original intention, because the wood was so badly damaged, had been to make them white. He notes that this was something that might be changed. 

Indiana then discusses his work on the first panel of a new, untitled, large oil on paper work, which he returned to that evening after a visit to Ellsworth Kelly's studio and dinner alone. He explains that he had been procrastinating on the work "due to sheer laziness . . . perhaps the 'fear,'" and that he intends to have a large cluster of spheres in the center part, illustrated by four spheres in two rows of two. Despite keeping busy he expresses loneliness, and a growing impatience with his "lowly status," asking "What is "big?"

Indiana's journals also provide insight into the artist's taste in music. Here he mentions painting to Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale's two-piano ensemble playing of Samuel Barber's Souvenirs.