John O’Donohue — The Inner Landscape of Beauty

Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail. Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention onto details (for instance, the excruciatingly beautiful curve of a lost lover’s neck). Art may seem to involve b

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"the creator is an artist above all." yes, that’s what I think may be the most poetic way of stating this conclusion that the world, in large part, does embody beautiful ideas; that if you regard the world as a work of art — first of all, it helps you understand things, and secondly, it’s a pretty good work of art. It has tremendous beauty. It has ... See more

What's beautiful depends on who we are, what we've encountered, where we live, and when. Likewise, the art that opens us to the chaotic stream of reality-the art we find beautiful-changes with time and with us, as we evolve. Beauty, I'd come to think, doesn't have to have a physical form, and it certainly doesn't have to be something we agree on. B

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