Friday, December 12, 2014

Early Autumn Woods What is beauty, Terrance Hayes, Franz Kafka





Early Autumn Woods
  oil on panel   8" x 10"

"Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. 
It survives alright. It aches like an open book.
It makes it difficult to live."
Terrance Hayes


 Autumn Streambank
  oil on panel   8" x 10"

What the best art tries to do is take the familiar and restore it a kind of strangeness, a kind of newness - to allow us to see them as never before. Perhaps a good definition of beauty is something that takes us unaware and unexpected - yet calls us to stop and exit our everydayness and simply contemplate.  
These two subjects are not two miles from our place - a location I have been to several times but on a given day, at a particular time, parts of this familiar landscape come to life as a new and fascinating subject. It is always a mystery to me and perhaps it needs to remain as such. 

"Be still and quite solitary.
The world will offer itself to you
to be unmasked. It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
Franz Kafka