One of the radical tenets of Christianity is the concept of love. That it is not something one can demand, barter for, nor merit, but only offer and possibly receive. Beauty may be as radical as that. That it is not an attribute of a thing or subject, but an opening offered between the viewer and the viewed. That regardless of our potential biological biases for standards of beauty, or our cultural preferences for a given measure of beauty, beauty itself resides in the opening of the individual towards the other. That overtime, we can learn to go beyond the ugly or evil, and give space to that which is good.

That space, exists too between the artist and their art. What the artist imbues within their art isn’t beauty, but the space for beauty to reside. And when we view the artwork, we too open another space for beauty to reside within. Naturally we all we have our tendencies and biases towards a given standard, but beauty isn’t out there nor in here, it’s in the spaces between that we allow to open up the difference between natural beauty and arts beauty is that we recognize that we are not alone in having opened that particular space. Someone else has already pointed towards the direction where such a space can be nurtured, and shared that with us, a stranger-

Hence opening up a space for humanity.


Pigmentation is often a collection of spaces such as music is composed of notes and silences.

 © GAMcCullough      2011