On Beauty

In the early fall I fairly much stumbled upon this fellow while rounding the corner at a local pond. I don’t actually know if it is a male or female, I just know that it was kind enough to ignore me completely so that I could creep down the bank a little for this photo op.

Then, a couple of weeks later I let myself drown in interference gold and scratchy textures. I have no way of remembering how many glazes/treatments I wrangled with, but this is a work I honestly love. It changes dramatically with every slight shift in perspective, and was a monster to photograph for my portfolio. It’s all the parts of me that stem from the Far East, the Anatolian steppes, and the Pacific Northwest. Because it changes with every glance, it is true to a self that has also changed over many times and places. It’s the very icon of the steadfastness of change.

It is also pretty.

Anyone who knows me as an artist knows this: I will try to meet every ugliness in my personal life with beauty. I will manifest it – from where, I do not know, but it comes (well, not as often as I would like, but it does), and it is needed. Everywhere I look there are truly vile images pouring forth- images that are based in very real violence and intolerance and ego and greed. Social media pours its product out in record volumes, and the cries for justice and compassion are mingled with the harsh tones of mockery, ignorance, and infantile egoism from the other side of the scales. Our youth have been scarred for generations to come.

In Ottoman art, the skies are often painted in gold or in gold leaf, denoting the spiritual aspect of the heavens. It has quite the opposite symbolism that, say, gold filigree on walls or gold plating on toilets have today. In Byzantine and Medieval art, gold was often used for the same reasons, as well as to mark the spiritual halos of the saints. Today, we reflect that these gold halos might be the marks of especially strong auras around spiritually advanced persons, and not just decorative ornamentalism. The use of gold in this painting doesn’t just show my love for change, it also shows my interest in spiritual growth.

As humans, we crave beauty, just as much as we might mock it from time to time for superficiality. Beauty is often idolized for petty and small reasons. But, beauty can also be inspiring, uplifting: it can soothe souls; it can encourage us to aim higher, to be better. If the subject is from Nature, the effect is even more so. Can it not be that when we put out the spiritually beautiful into the world, we might be able to encourage some micro-scaled shift in our human expectations of ourselves and of each other? Is it not true that bit by bit we create the conditions of our world for all who occupy it?

I’m not going to look up the study to cite it here, but of course you may do so. A while back now, a study was done on how our immediate environments affect and reflect our well-being. I recall that the urban study found that those people who perceived their environment as run-down and broken tended not only to keep it that way, but to add to the neglect. Those people who resided in environments that were perceived to be more pleasing tended to work harder at maintaining their environment and making continuing improvements. Neglect brought only more neglect and despair, while the upkeep of aesthetics brought health and positive outlooks.

I relate this while I realize in horror and humor that I, myself, have always been quite the mess.

Notoriously so. Nevermind.

We look for hope and opportunity and brightness, to paraphrase a comment on my last post … we look to find the patches of brightness. Look longer, look harder, look back at our past, and look far into our future. Look around you for the beauty of the human soul; and if it isn’t there, then make it happen, in whatever ways you can.