Large-scale construction isn’t pretty. There’s ripping apart that has to happen in order to build up.
In that destruction of construction, we see subterranean realities emerge.
We see mud become clarified through agitation.
We find the weathered remnants of previous construction.
We discover the patterns that have been concealed.
And we see the relationship between the earth and the building. 
Possibly the best-known quote about beauty:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
It’s the conclusion of the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, and the lines have been interpreted in as many ways as beauty itself has been.
Keats was describing imagery on an ancient clay object painted with figures and scenes, but his words still resonate more than 200 years later. We still struggle with the ideas of beauty and truth even as we yearn for them.
I like these lines because they are expansive. They make us puzzle over what “beauty” means to us, what “truth” is to us.
We will see more beauty if we openly explore how we define it.
Sometimes truth is ugly, and sometimes beauty isn’t “true”. But the problem there is grasping the words too narrowly.
Keats wrote about the immortality of both beauty and truth when captured in art. We can create our own art in an instant simply by seeing beauty within whatever is true to our eyes.
That’s why I can find beauty at a gas station or in a parking lot. I don’t avert my eyes to the truth of what those places are – their utility, their commercialism. Instead, I look at them openly, examining every part – even the oil stains, peeling paint and trash.
Seeing directly is seeing truth, and therein lies beauty.
We bury things, we leave things behind. Yet they remain below the surface, exerting their presence. If we sit in the shadow side, we discover its strength and beauty.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung, The Philosophical Tree
I love to explore the effect of light on materials and spaces, and I’m interested in how shifts in perspective can pry open our unconscious mind.
In this earlier manifestation of “Seeing Beauty,” from 2022, I chose to explore my own basement, cluttered with abandoned objects and the utility systems of an 80-year-old home. This setting enabled me to bring these ideas together in a meditation on the shadow side.
We may start to realize that the twisted infrastructure is essential to the whole. We can recognize the things left behind as valuable. And we begin to integrate the shadow side into our consciousness.
I used to have a gallery space in North Georgia where I displayed my photography. Many of the people who came in were not typical gallery-goers – they were ordinary folks from a small rural town, and some seemed intimidated to come in and just look at art. I tried to make them feel welcome.
One of my favorite things was seeing them respond to my macro photographs: very small details of common plants, insects and fungi. They’d be drawn in by the shapes and colors, and then they’d read the title and exclaim, “Why, I have those in my backyard! I never saw it this way before!”
This is an important role for an artist: to see beauty in all its varied forms and to put it in front of other people in a way that changes their perspective. As an instructor, I believe it’s part of my job to help people learn to see beauty for themselves.
To explore this topic, I am doing a series of walks in ordinary or even ugly places. My quest is to find beauty within those places that we usually pass by. I’ll create short videos of these walks and post them under the Walks section.
I’ll also be taking a stroll through the literature about beauty from Plato onwards. And I’ll examine the neurological basics of how the eye and brain perceive beauty. The posts on these topics will be in the Thoughts section, and the books and articles referred to will be listed in About / Readings.
This website is my offering to those who would like to see more beauty in their daily lives, and to educators who want to teach the practice of seeing beauty. If you’d like to get updates , or make comments on the posts, please subscribe!
