The Art of Beauty Part III: Building a Better World

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

We recently received a copy of a new book by a good friend of ours, Bryan Welch. It is titled: Beautiful and Abundant - Building the World We Want. Bryan’s impressive credentials include having been the publisher of Mother Earth News and the Utne Reader. His focus here is on sustainability and a future that provides a beautiful and abundant quality of life. We were struck that he would choose the concept of beauty as an essential element in building a vision for a sustainable future.

He writes, “Nature’s beauty is, often, the standard against which we measure manmade art. Art eleborates on nature’s image. Without reference to nature, could we even define beauty?” This resonates with us because as artists we have always seen nature as the source and the teacher.

We rarely hear about preserving nature for its beauty as an essential part of the American Dream anymore, even though that concept was the inspiration for our national anthem. Nature doesn’t contain beauty, it is Beauty. Natu…