A beautiful life....

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What makes something beautiful? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is perception. Someone said that the job of the artist is to find beauty. Artists will tell you that when they are seeing through artists eyes, everything becomes beautiful. What makes it so? I think it's because the artists eye is one that sees without judgement, that sees simply what is there, and what is there is nature. When we are drawing from life, we see not a fat or thin or ugly person - we see curves, shadows, light, form, edges - to make a successful drawing, we must forget what we know, and see what is there in front of us. We must really see what is there. We need to leave out what is we think we know about the subject (have beginners mind), and instead discover what is there. We can focus every detail, or step back, and try to see just the essence, the gesture, what is truly the heart of the sitter. Leaving out the "baggage" and teh "knowing" and focusing on the heart is what gives us a likeness, and a drawing with life, with beauty.

You know what else makes a drawing beautiful? It's interest. The most beautiful drawings are interesting. A perfect face is beautiful on it's own, but what makes it interesting, and an extraordinary portrait, is expression, soul, life. Simply rendering perfect bone structure is usually less satisfying, and much less interesting. What makes it beautiful is often life itself - the light on a curve in a given moment; the colours of her dress reflected in her face; her expression as she looks out to the world; the pose - what is she doing in this precious moment? A "plain" face captured in a moment by an artist who has observed and captured these things becomes beautiful and is often more so than a conventionally beautiful face. A face that is what would normally be described diplomatically as "interesting" becomes extraordinarily beautiful seen with the artists eye, this face with all it's folds and curves and shadows and light becomes (as it always was) a work of art, breathtaking in it's beauty.

Perfection is neither interesting nor beautiful. What makes something beautiful is it's essence, it's very imperfections, it's uniqueness, and the more "imperfections", the more interesting, the more potential for the play of light and Shadow, the more places for the colours of the world to rest, the more room there is for the portrait to stand by itself, breathtaking in simply being itself.

All this is like life. What makes a life beautiful? Not perfection, and yet so many of us feel the need to be that way. An interesting life is a beautiful life, and what makes life interesting is being in each precious moment - noticing what is around us, seeing without judgement, embracing the folds and curves and shadows and light of life, and of ourselves. If we see with an artists eye, life becomes beautiful. Everyone and everything becomes interesting, breathtaking and exciting. There is no room for judgement, only possibility, acceptance and love. We can see what is really there and leave out the details that do not serve the essence. We can create our own beautiful portrait, of ourselves, and of our lives.