If you receive this in your email and want to see the photos, click on the title “Inspired by Beauty”.
Earning a living with art in one of California’s poorest and least educated counties often causes me to reflect on the difficulty of my chosen career in this location. Art is a luxury, and most people around here are just trying to keep gas in their cars, food in their refrigerators, cell phones up to date, color on their hair, and acrylic on their nails.
But while art is a luxury, I believe beauty to be a necessity. Art is a way to introduce beauty into a squalid place. For example, look at the before and after of my studio:
Beauty restores and heals. You cannot overdose on beauty. (I got these concepts from John Eldredge.)
Something about painting a mural sets the stage for people to have deep, personal, and meaningful conversations with me. While I was painting at St. Anthony’s Retreat, an observer told me that the reason people strive for money is so they can use their riches as protection against ugliness. Wow!
A friend used to send me articles by Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest. He once wrote that most contemporary art is garbage, has no soul, and is shallow. Harsh words, but they contain some truth when one considers the lack of attention to beauty in much “modern art”. Here is a direct quote:
“When I thought about why that was, a host of reasons presented themselves to me. Perhaps it was that the ability to draw was no longer taught and expected to be a basic skill of those who would call themselves our ‘artists.’ Perhaps it was that the proliferation of art schools and ‘art majors’ gave the baby boomers and their offspring a way through college that required as much intellect as a point guard, but not nearly as much talent and dedication.” (I added the bold for the part on drawing.)
I heard an artist interview several (many?) years ago. Sherie McGraw said this: “There is a beauty to solving a problem.” She also said something that could have come straight from your Central California Artist’s mouth: “I am somewhat of a dinosaur but what I am inspired by is beauty.”
So, in this unlikely place to earn a living as a professional artist, this place I’ve called home for 64 years, this place of high unemployment, low education, and low income, I persist in doing my best to capture the most beautiful parts and places, on paper and on canvas.
6 Comments
Keep doing what you’re doing. You live in an amazing place- or places! Three Rivers, the valley and Mineral King!!!! All amazing and I love seeing the photos and the paintings.
There is beauty in what you do and share.
Happy New Year to you and Michael.
Thank you, Anne, and Happy New Year to you and your Michael!
Much of what you said can apply also to audio art, the gift of making beautiful music–“beautiful,” as opposed to the noise and chaos that makes up much of “modern music” these days, which is a reflection of the chaos felt by those who do not have a Firm Foundation (see 1 Corinthians 3:10) . . . but I digress.
I agree, it’s important these days to “keep gas in their cars, food in their refrigerators, cell phones up to date” but hair color and acrylic fingernails I would consider a luxury. Can you imagine Mary Trauger distraught over dark roots and breaking a nail??
And we are glad you persist!
Sharon, you are so right about music too.
About those acrylic nails and hair color: it was meant to be sarcastic, but also a commentary on society, whose view of important beauty seldom extends past their own mirrors.
There are so many examples of people whining, “I don’t have enough money to buy groceries this month,” then think nothing of paying a babysitter, dinner out for 2 at a nice restaurant, and a first-run movie for north of $200. It’s all a matter of priorities, which many people have topsy-turvy these days!
Sharon, we seem to be a nation of children, somehow trapped in adult’s lives without an understanding of choices and consequences. But maybe it has always been that way and now we are old enough to notice it.
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