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Tag: beauty

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The intersection of faith, beauty and practice

Peace, 8X16, private collection. And guess what? The color in this photo is pretty whacked, too!

Last week I was talking with a highly-motivated student about the composition of her painting. It started as three t-shirts and morphed into prayer flags. She works in her basement and it’s hard there to gin drapery up with wind or sky, although she could probably do something with a pattern of pipes or stairs. The contrast between the hopefulness of prayer and the pedestrian nature of plumbing has potential.

Of course, it’s always about me, so I got to reminiscing about a painting I did three years ago. It was October, 2021. Russia was massing troops on the Ukrainian border in anticipation of the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War. (We’re about to observe the third anniversary of their assault in February, 2021. Nobody knows what the casualty count is.) I was just sick reading the news.

Drawing by Carol L. Douglas

The Amitabha Stupa and Peace Park in Sedona is a place dedicated to peace, with hundreds of chains of prayer flags. It’s not my faith, but I can pray anywhere. I painted and prayed, prayed and painted. I don’t know what impact my prayers have had, or how many other people prayed earnestly for peace. The beautiful thing about prayer is, that we will never know in this lifetime, nor must we.

Some of the stupa’s prayer flags are threadbare and sunbleached almost grey; some are almost new. I have no idea who hangs them in the piñons and junipers along the trails but from an aesthetic standpoint they’re very lovely, fluttering in the breeze. They curve in long drooping lines, set against dark greens, a deep blue sky and red rock.

We painters can always find something to hate in our own work, but as a result of the profound emotional, spiritual and aesthetic nexus of that moment, I’ve had an abiding love for this painting. It’s sold now, but I don’t I know if I ever explained my feelings about it to its new owner.

The experiences where faith, beauty and practice intersect are very rare, I told my student. I doubt I’ve had more than half a dozen of them in my career. Saying that pulled me up short. I’d never have had them at all if I weren’t a painter. And if that isn’t a privilege, I don’t know what is.

My two classes starting next week are:

Zoom Class: Beyond realism to expressive painting

Tuesdays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST

February 18, 25
March 4, 18, 25
April 1

This class focuses on design and composition for expressive painting. Students will be encouraged to develop their own personal creative vision while working on refining their artistic skills through traditional studies.

This class is targeted toward more advanced painters who’ve already mastered the basics of paint application. It’s open to students in watercolor, gouache, oils, and pastel. Learn More

Zoom class: design and drawing

Drawing by Carol L. Douglas

Mondays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST

February 17, 24,
March 3,
March 17, 24, 31

This class improves on the skills learned in Fundamentals of Drawing. We’ll use a pencil but all of these concepts are transferrable to painting; experienced painters are encouraged to try them in paint as well.

This class is targeted to the learner who has mastered measurement, shading, and perspective and wants to further develop skills in design and rendering. Learn More

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Happiness is beauty in, beauty out

Persistent clouds along the Upper Wash, 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 unframed.

Every morning I do a fast hike from Erickson Field to the summit of Beech Hill and back, about 4.5 miles. It’s not steep but I try to bring it in at an hour and a half. A twenty-minute mile is a fast pace for hill-walking. As I approach the summit, it can be unpleasant, particularly if the trail is icy or the wind is howling.

Then I round the bend and Penobscot Bay is laid out at my feet. On particularly ratty mornings, there is the faint glimmer of Owls Head Light, faithfully bringing mariners in to safety as it has for almost two hundred years. On a clear day, you can see north to Acadia and as far out to sea as Matinicus. The sea may shimmer, glimmer, scowl, or be obscured by fog, but it’s always beautiful.

“I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious,” said Andrew Wyeth. My daily jaunts up the hill serve the same purpose. They’re a positive input in a world full of negativity.

Dish of Butter, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

You are what you eat

This weekend, my hometown of Buffalo braces itself for yet another blizzard. It’s being called a “once in a generation event.” Perhaps they’re right. But there’s inflationary hype around storms. It’s been blizzarding in Buffalo since long before someone invented the term ‘bomb cyclone’.

That inflationary hype is true across the news, not just the weather. Most of us now get our news on the internet. That’s a crash site. Even assuming what you read is true (and, sadly, that may not be the case) it’s heavily slanted towards tragedy.

Back in the era of daily papers, we read about our own communities. That included positive news. Now we’re fed a steady diet of kidnappings in Kentucky, mayhem in Mississippi, or crime in California. This gives us the false sense that the world is spinning out of control. It’s just spinning, the same as it always has, but in the past we weren’t trying to absorb all the world’s tragedies before breakfast.

If you regularly ingest a diet of bad news, artificial drama, and hostility, you’re going to feel depressed, anxious and angry.

Breaking storm, 48X30, oil on canvas, $5,579 framed

“You can’t ignore reality,” a friend retorted. But this bad news is no more real than the good news and peace that surrounds us all. We’re being sold it to keep our eyes glued to our screens. We can turn it off.

We can choose what we look at. It’s why I climb a hill every day, and why I go to church. How can I paint what’s beautiful if I haven’t focused my mind on what’s beautiful?

Dawn Wind, Twin Lights, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869.

The news is driving us crazy

It’s no wonder that so many of us take antidepressants, which, incidentally, don’t seem to improve quality of life. My father and paternal grandmother both died in the grip of long-term depression. To be fair, they both had good reason for it. As did I. But I’m not a depressive, despite years of thinking otherwise. What changed? My focus.

There is much to be said for lifting our eyes to the hills, both literally and metaphorically. Hiking has physical benefits that include improving mood, of course. So does spending time actively seeking beauty. But an outward focus also includes the people around us. Self-focused naval-gazing is demoralizing.

Tomorrow, we enter the Christmas season. The greatest gift you can give yourself is to actively seek out beauty—in creation, in others, and in yourself.

And don’t forget, here’s a quiz for you to discover the kind of workshop that suits you best. There’s no obligation, of course; it’s all in fun.

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Good design is in the details

The people who made beautiful art in earlier eras weren’t focused on themselves, but on craft and how it fit into a greater whole.

The rood screen of York Minster featured the kings of England from William the Conquerer to Henry VI. That's the only reason these figures weren't smashed, and they give us an idea of what the saints in their niches might have looked like.

York was founded by the Romans, slumped into inconsequence under Anglian rule, was rebuilt by the Northumbrians, conquered by Vikings, was sacked by the Normans, and then rose slowly again, only to be pummeled during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the English Civil War. It is, in short, deep and complex, and that is visible on the very fabric of the city.

York Minster contains three monuments designed by Grinling Gibbons. They don’t stand out. That’s not a slam on Gibbons, but rather a reflection of the depth and breadth of good design in the Minster. It’s hard to be moved by massive marble reliquaries to slumbering prelates, but they’re all masterworks. They make their point powerfully.

There are thousands of beautiful small details in the Minster.

The north transept contains the so-called Five Sisters window. Five long, narrow lancet windows are the largest example of grisaille glass left in the world today.  Grisaille glass came into vogue after a prohibition on the use of colored glass by the Cistercian Order in 1134, and these are dated to around 1260.

These windows are so contemporary in effect that I wondered if they were modern. Yet they are almost 800 years old. There’s a lesson there: if your art is solely about ideas, it’s unlikely that it hasn’t already been done.

The quire at York Minster.

York Minster survived the hacking and smacking of Henry VIII’s evil minions, but the saints in its innumerable niches did not. They stand empty to this day, a stark reminder of the dangers of iconoclastic fury. Still, one has a sense of the power of the cathedral’s design as it moves from broad concept to finest detail. First there is its standard cruciform shape, oriented to the east and balanced by a tower rising above the crossing. This became so standardized in ecclesiastical design that we sometimes forget that it was a new language then. So, too, was the inexorable visual sweep upward and the glorious light. It must have seemed amazing to people accustomed to squat wattle-and-daub or stone huts.

Contemporary needlework at York Minster.

It is impossible to describe all the layers of design that were integrated into this new cathedral form—arches, buttresses, niches, gargoyles, right down to tiny bits and bobs of sculpture. It has evolved over the centuries. Thus, the tiny headless saints dancing on the western wall seem as much a part of the fabric of the place as the Great East Window. The statues were sculpted in 2004 by Terance Hammill and they are sending a semaphore message with their haloes: Christ is here.

Semaphore Saints, 2004, by Terance Hamill, York Minster.

I was raised in the era of Brutalism and Scandinavian modern and have a fondness for stripped-down design, whether it’s in architecture or painting. But there’s something missing in that: the integration of detail and depth.

Part of that comes, I think, from the egocentricity of our own age. The people who made beautiful art in earlier eras weren’t focused on themselves, but on craft and how it fit into a greater whole. That’s as true of the metalwork of the Vikings and Romans as it is of the ecclesiastical art at York Minster.

The stonemason's yard is an eternal verity of a great cathedral as parts are constantly wearing out and must be replaced.

The Five Sisters window is too extensive to have been the work of any single man. It fits in an austere blind arcade of banded stone, and is topped by another group of five lancets. I expect the glassblowers, the men who leaded the windows, and the stone carvers each had their specific instructions, handed down to them by someone who, in turn, was following instructions. These plans would have been rigorous and limited. That ruled out the self-expression we consider basic in our own time, and yet it resulted in one of the glories of civilization.