Beauty Shall Change The World

I used to be friends with a famous Canadian artist just before her name became, well not quite a household word (she will never hold a candle to Emily Carr)  We disappeared out of each other's lives many years ago, for a number of reasons not worth mentioning on this blog.  Some thirteen years following the end of our friendship, I also began to paint.  Unlike my ex-friend I never became famous though I have sold almost one hundred paintings in my career as an artist.  My work has never appeared in a good gallery and I am not sure if this is ever going to happen or if it  will ever need to happen.  On this post I have copied and pasted images of her art juxtaposed next to mine.  I have always wanted to see how well my art would stand compared to some of the works of an already renowned and accomplished artist.  I am not going to name her here out of respect for her privacy, but some of you who are familiar with her work will likely recognize at least some of her images.  In all fairness all the bird paintings are mine.  The others are by the other, famous artist and also by Emily Carr.

During a retrospective show of her paintings I saw a video interview in which she mentioned that she does not like painting anything that is "pretty."  She said that pretty is weak (pretty weak?) and she is interested in painting art and images that are strong.  I have often thought of my painting as being primarily aesthetic, or if you like, pretty.  But I also try to deliver through my images and motifs a sense of strength.  Perhaps I could call it beauty?  But looking at my ex-friend's painting, I see much that is beautiful, strong and even pretty and I believe this to be true of much of my own painting.  It would go without saying that our styles are decidedly different.  I will also concede that she is by far a more experienced, skilled and versatile artist than me.  However, I will leave it to the judgement of you, my dear readers, as to whether my paintings could compare favourably with those of a much more accomplished artist than I could ever hope to be.  I am also inserting some images of work by the great Emily Carr, as a kind of control.  For those of you not familiar with Emily Carr's work, I have included only a few of her paintings of trees and forests.

This also returns me to the theme of beauty.  What exactly is beauty?  Today has been what I would call a beautiful day, an extraordinarily beautiful day.  That the sun shone brightly all day certainly helps me ascribe this quality.  That the daylight is already getting gradually stronger and brighter as we begin to move towards spring certainly helps.  The cool fresh air and the early spring crocuses and snowdrops beginning to appear and...what is it?  Everything today had a crystalline clarity, a jewel-like radiance.  The colours of everything were not only bright, but something magical, transfigured, as though an unseen presence, a very kind, lovely and joyous presence, was impregnating the air, and by extension, us.  This subtle radiance, not always so subtle, influenced and informed everything today, or so it seemed.

    

 There is also this sense of the subtle, almost invisible interplay between people and between us and our environment.  I found that even the smallest act of kindness or courtesy had a strong swell to it that seemed to buoy up and touch everything.  The words originally ascribed to Dostoevsky "Beauty Shall Save The World" have been occupying my mind today.  How shall beauty save the world, and what kind or what quality of beauty?

 

 

I think this beauty isn't so much a visible or sensual aesthetic so much as an invisible reality that is made manifest in the way we interact with one another and with our environment, in the way we treat one another, in our willingness and ability to slow down, stop, and give way to one another, and to stop and really perceive, see and hear what is already there.

 

 

I am aware today of how early one morning, some seventeen years ago, I was taking a long walk that led me over the Cambie Street Bridge here in Vancouver where I live.

 

The sun was just rising and it's golden-coppery light lit and burnished everything, as though all the plain drab and ugly high rise buildings had been suddenly set on fire and lit with a surreal radiance so that something so ordinary and ugly was suddenly transformed into an incandescent and flaming reality.  Then I realized , that really I was seeing these things the way they really were, the way they were meant, by some divine and eternal mind, to appear in their pure and eternal aspect.  It only took this new golden-blood light of the rising sun to bring out what was always there, but seldom in our range of vision.

  This winter I am taking special care to notice the beauty I don't always so readily see, especially with the way the light plays on everything that surrounds me.  The bare trees made beautiful in the sun and the rain and the shimmering green moss and the delicate ferns growing from their trunks and branches.  The presence of colour everywhere, people's faces, the sense however elusive of the soul, the spirit of the stranger standing next to me.  There is so much beauty that lies beneath the ugliness.

  We have only to look for it.  To believe in its existence and to believe and desire that when this beauty touches us, whether through a sound in the air, or a flash of colour or a sudden insight of a hidden truth, that it, this beauty alone can transform us and the world of which we are each an irreplaceable member.