Life...The Vivere

Sunday, January 10, 2016

WHAT IS BEAUTY, etc.

January 10, 2016

My first blog posting for 2016...hope your New Year will be better than 2015 as there's always room for improvement! Wishing you the best of everything...

This week's art challenges were especially fun because it was food for thought for me. TAKE A WORD challenge blog asked participating artists what they considered "beauty" to be. There's a long list, including music and family around which I didn't create art. But, here's what I DID consider...

A snowy winter day is beautiful to me...

the power and serenity of prayer is beautiful as is the art that it has inspired through the ages...

Buddhist nun praying at pagoda beneath burning incense


*Golden Rock, a sacred site where pilgrims come to pray, near Yangon, Myanmar*

Religious women bathing in Varanasi's sacred Ganges River, India... another awe-inspiring site.

This is the most amazing Church of the Transfiguration on the Russian island of Kizhi. Built in the early 1700's, it's all wood...no nails...and comprises 22 domes. The floor to ceiling religious frescoes within are jaw-droppingly beautiful...just imagine the age of this art. Russia stands out to me as a place where I saw/experienced the most beautiful ancient art I've ever seen and it adorns the walls and ceilings of so many of the old churches.

and the beauty in the power of LOVE...

THE THREE MUSES asked that we create a piece of art about "hearts." Mine is a bit of a shout out to Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first successful human-to-human heart transplant on December 3, 1967. Medical science has come a long way since then...