…and an artist's struggle to capture it.
“The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.”
- Khalil Gibran
Now let's grab a coffee...! :)
Every artist on this planet wants, tries and achieves to capture beauty. Yes, every single artist does. And I won't even bother you with details as to who "qualifies" as an artist and who doesn't, because I think we all know being an artist really has nothing to do with fancy brushes, an expensive Cintiq or the right Camera equipment. To be honest I don't even like the word artist. It has become a title someone needs to aim for, work for and deserve it. The Painter argues whether the photographer is an artist, the independent novelist calls it blasphemy that commercial writers call themselves artists… And at the end all there is left is you, lying in bed asking yourself "am I an ARTIST?" "Am I truly an artist or did I just choose to frame the random outcomes of mere boredom and hang them on my wall?" "If I am an artist, at what point did I even become one? Was it the day I lingered away from pencil for the first time? Or the day I bought my first canvas? My first exhibition?"
Art is more than that. Art is about how we see the world around us. An artist is a lonely, old man sitting on a run-down bench next to a stinking gas station, who looks at the pine trees and is amazed about how small we are compared to those giants of mother earth. An artist is a little child who can't stop asking why that tiny, yellow bird has feathers and she doesn't. An artist is a young dynamic engineer who admires the elegant simplicity of an equation.
An artist to me is someone who is able to look at the world around us and recognizes it's beauty.
Art is beauty. To me, not everything is beautiful, but I do recognize that what I find boring, ugly, maybe even revolting will be the incarnation of pure beauty for someone else. And I'm glad it is.
Yes, I believe there is some form of main-stream concept of beauty due to similar experiences, similar contexts we live in that would heighten the probability something is considered beautiful by a large number of people. But at the end it's just statistically more frequent. Nothing more. It isn't MORE beautiful than other things are and it certainly doesn't mean everything else isn't beautiful at all.
Sadie Nardini, an amazing yoga instructor said recently that everything in this world is neutral. It is US that attach a meaning to it. WE choose how we let it affect us and I believe the same thing is true when it comes to how we perceive things. Our sense of beauty is like a "thumbs up"-"thumbs down" sticker we paste on everything we see out there. And it is something that doesn't really have anything to do with the thing itself. If we think an apple is amazingly stunning it won't change the apple, neither will considering him ugly and misshapen. But at the end we are able to attach our definition of beauty to everything and everyone. From a woman's body, to a building's structure, a rock, rain, cars, natural disasters, a smile, death, shoes…
Now what distinguishes "us" (painters, photographers, dancers, novelists…) from many other people is a certain obsession to capture and recreate the beauty we see around us. And by capturing and recreating it I don't mean recreating a flawless, mainstream idea… even those artists who on purpose want to capture and depict the ugliness and brutality of life do it for a reason and that reason that has somehow made them consider THAT special subject or theme worth of their capturing, interpretation and recreation is what we consider beauty. After all, we do it to express something deep inside of us. We NEED to do so. And everyone who thinks about publishing, sharing, showing his work to others somehow hopes there will be someone out there who will recognize the kind of beauty it is trying to portray, no matter how abstract or unusual it is - and maybe even share it. After all, we wouldn't WANT to create something we don't actually like. Sometimes he have to. But we rarely consider those things "art" in our own interpretation.And I honestly believe that every work tells you something about it's maker. About his interpretation of beauty and therefor about his personality. It's never an open book, it's merely a slightly distorted glimpse, but a glimpse nonetheless. Because what and how we choose to spend our time and effort on is a decision that will always reflect some part of us. It's a reflection of how we see our world and how we choose to live with it.
What is YOUR interpretation of beauty?
Gabriela
- Listening to: Guinea Pigs cooing
- Reading:Sozialtherapie für Sexualstraftäter im Justizvollzug
- Watching: Lost
- Drinking: Hot Milk & Honey
