“Live to manifest Beauty.”
My goal as an artist is to elevate the mundane to the beautiful. I am in no way original in this endeavor. The act of painting can be simplified to just studying something in order to elevate it to beauty. Even if its an abstraction of emotions like Jackson Pollock. Even if it’s the tortures of pain like Frida Kahlo. Even if it’s a soup can like Andy Warhol.
I was thinking about what does the world need, because that is what the aim of art is right? To meet the outcry of the soul or society. I don’t think we need more conflict or anger. I think we just need to see the beauty in front of us. Beauty is everywhere and its what stirs the eternity awake in all of us.
When I say beauty, Im not talking about prettiness or something surface level. Beauty isn’t artificial or far away. It is something in front of you that you have to experience. We live in a culture addicted to glamour and images, because we are starved of beauty. we keep looking in all the wrong places to satisfy the need. We let so much ugliness surround us, in our music, screens, architecture, language, our food, or our thoughts. We let it into our thoughts and how we see the world. We almost seem to seek it, and it regurgitates in how we treat each other, animals and our environment. We seem to find it easier to dwell in the dull and artificial. We’re tired and ugliness dulls and deadens the human spirit. So we convince ourselves that beauty doesn’t belong to us and we allow ugliness to shrivel and thin our lives. We want to believe that we aren’t responsible for the poverty of beauty in our own lives.
Beauty doesn’t belong to the elite and it doesn’t always dwell in the extraordinary. Often times beauty is seeing the extraordinary within the ordinary. The saying that, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” doesn’t necessarily mean that beauty it subjective. Maybe it means that beauty is in the act of beholding.
But what about pain? How do we behold beauty in the midst of immense pain? Even in the most horrendous places, people find within each other a depth of beauty. And I think we have all experienced something painfully beautiful. Like holding someone when they cry, or telling someone that we love goodbye, maybe forever. It’s difficult being alive, but I have yet to find something truly worth while, that wasn’t also challenging, like falling in love or peeling a mango.
How do we find beauty in the mundane? We start looking for things that are just as alive, if not more alive, than you are. Watch clouds roll in, or listen to the wind move the leaves in a tree. Watch a bird take a bath, a dog play or an ant carry a crumb across the floor. When you look for life around you, the world comes alive inside you. If you want beauty in your life you have to manifest it.
Beauty invites us into the graciousness of who we truly are. If you want beauty in your life you have to manifest it. Maybe that’s why we resist. We have to be kind to have beauty. Wherever there is kindness, there is the gentle presence of beauty. Look people deep into their eyes, even if it’s uncomfortable. We’re groggy in awakening to each other. Someone can tell you who they think that they are. But have you ever listened to someone talk, and know that the story you are hearing doesn’t hold a candle to the life that’s in their eyes? There is an immeasurable depth to all of us, we just forget to look. We reduce ourselves and our identities to such shallow things. I’m not going to list them. You know what they are for you. You know how you’re reducing yourself. Lets call out the beauty within and around all of us. I’m calling you to manifest beauty.