On Beauty
Perspectives from The Artist's Road
“When we awaken to the call of beauty, we become aware of new ways of being in the world. We were created to be creators. At its deepest heart, creativity is meant to serve and evoke beauty. When this desire and capacity come alive, new wells spring up in parched ground; difficulty becomes invitation and rather than striving against the grain of our nature, we fall into rhythm with its deepest urgency and passion. The time is now ripe for beauty to surprise and liberate us”.
- John O’Donohue - Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
What is beauty, and why is it so important to us as human beings and as a society? It is a fascinating and endlessly debated question. There is no single, easily tweetable answer to that question. Being an irreducible intangible has its advantages, kind of like the question, “What is Art?”. The deep and profound experiences of beauty and art are at once highly personal and yet, often universal. We can agree when we see something beautiful that it is so, without being able to say exactly why. Describing a list of its attributes is not the same as appreciating its inherent qualities and often demeans the very experience of it.
Beauty is irrational—it lies beyond, and sometimes violates human logic. We often paint peonies from our gardens in the spring, admiring their lovely shapes and colors and wondering why they are so beautifully made? A flower only needs a bit of the right color and scent to attract its pollinators, not the explosion and profusion that we find in nature. Our orange-colored plastic feeder suffices to attract the hummingbirds and nectar moths, but we would not describe it as beautiful. Why then does nature expend so much energy this way? We’re not implying that nature seeks to please us—beauty exists on our world quite independently of us. It appears to be in the very makeup of the universe to create the kind of beauty that humans can recognize. We personally, can’t imagine our existence here without it.
We consider that beauty can always be at the core of our inspiration and creations. Not a generalized beauty, either, but a personal vision of it. There is beauty around us all the time, no matter where we live. A flower will bloom through a crack in concrete. The best and most truthful place to start is right in our own lives. When darkness threatens to invade our lives, we turn to our art for refuge and defense. We paint the people around us, the objects in our house which we love, pets, a bouquet of flowers, the view out our windows when the light is just-so. Anything that strikes us in a way that we cannot put into words. Therein lies the beauty in our own hearts, the personal artistic vision of our own souls. Then we share it with the world. That is how we will change the world for the better, one little vision of hope and beauty at a time.
This exploration of beauty in nature is beautifully articulated. Your question about why nature would expend such energy on creating unnecesary beauty really resonates. It suggests something fundamental about the universe itself. I've always found that the most powerfull art comes from noticing these small extravagances around us. The peony example perfectly captures how beauty exceeds pure function, inviting us to see beyond utility.
I’m so happy that you wrote about this😊