With all the snow abounding here (and more coming today) I have been struck by how beautiful it is. No matter how hard to navigate and how long winter is here in the North, the scenery is unbelievably beautiful. I cannot stop taking pictures, trying to keep the beauty forever.
When I was studying philosophy as an undergraduate, I was fascinated by Plato’s idea of absolute beauty. I held it to mean that there could be some standard to which we strive to attain, some beauty that was truth. The perfect painting waiting to be painted. Something everyone would know when they saw it, that it was beautiful, perfect. I once asked my Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche about this. He had been talking about absolute and relative truth. His reply stopped my mind: that absolute beauty was not a concept. I think he meant that we see beauty in relative terms. Every culture has its ideas about beauty and this too changes.
I have a friend whose cat is named beauty. Every time she mentions her cat by name, I am struck by the affection that conveys. True beauty must have a quality of connection in it. Are we connecting to what we know or to what we feel, like loving a cat?
I prefer my paintings to sit on the cusp between crude and beautiful, that they have a rawness that gives them life; not perfect. When they do, I feel the mystery of their creation. I read once that there is no point in striving for perfection because perfection is boring. The excitement is in the places where things rub against each other, make sparks, possibly make fire.