Sunday 14 April 2013

The Thin Line



"The temptation is always to detach interest from the person and attach it just to the body, but real beauty isn't simply skin deep, and the intention, sometimes the achievement of art is to express, through depicting the body (form), the splendor of embodiment - a being freely expressing the joy of being through that form and the grace of life itself".                                                  Roger Scruton on Beauty.





You never know what you've got till it's gone.

Some years ago, I was returning to England after a month away in Colorado in America. As my flight approached Bristol and we descended below the (inevitable) grey rain clouds, I was welcomed by the pleasing green of England - something which, I realized, had been very absent in my time away.
Listening to the radio a few days ago, a group of experts were discussing how we may, due to weather changes, have to get used to loosing the famous green lawns of the country in a few years time.




We're good at 'paving paradise', it seems. Replacing what's around us naturally with often radical changes. We often benefit, at least immediately, from such adjustments, but we often loose something along the way.

One of the reasons that art is vital is that, when done well, it causes us a moment of pause.

Like a summer's day in a meadow filled with moments of delight, art allows us to look deeper at ourselves and our world - to re-connect with questions and considerations that add depth and definition to our brief moments here, but the value, the need, for such moments can so quickly become lost if we fail to allow these pauses, allow such considerations, to inhabit us and lead is into that larger realm where beauty guides us.





The richness of art nude photography is truly achieved when, whilst creating an image, you know you are reflecting something of the depth, the value, of the person who you are privileged enough to work with - that their beauty, captured in that moment 'speaks' to the world that what truly counts about us, though often obscured by our car parks and pollution, hasn't been entirely lost or forgotten - we still know there is a treasure deeper than our pain and scars, and that keeps us wanting and relishing those rare moments when we truly encounter grace which offers a joy beyond words - a beauty which, perhaps one day, will pave paradise.


Images by Howard.
Magenta at Codda. Nicola in the Gallery. Vicki at the Tor.