BEAUTY-HAS NO ANTONYM?

Tomorrow night I am giving a guest formal dinner speech at Women's College, the University of Queensland residential college I attended many moons ago. I have chosen the topic of BEAUTY.

Regular readers will know I have written about beauty many times before [a couple of links are below]. Hopefully, the words will flow forth easily tomorrow night! My mother always says, write about what you know. I think the same goes for public speaking, and many creative pursuits. I may not know all about beauty, but it has been a focus of my thoughts for a long time.

                                          The Beauty Of Oil on linen 36 x 36 cm 2011

So, I have previously written about beauty's capacity as a portal, as a catalyst for hope [and therefore having political agency], as a reminder of what we loose if we don't look after ourselves and the planet. I have also explained my belief that beauty conscously elides ugliness, and in doing so, acknowledges it, and then relinquishes it to a presence in absentia. This conscious elision means beauty cannot be labeled as ignorant. It does mean, however, that an underlying pathos exists giving beauty a fulsome and mature dimensionality which contrasts with, and renders impotent, the vacuuousness of prettiness. Prettiness survives in the world of fashion, a mono dimensioned world which slips and slides across our everyday lives in the mass media.

But, to my title for this post. BEAUTY- HAS NO ANTONYM?

As I have been preparing for my speech, I suddenly had a light bulb moment. Many people might think ugliness is the opposite of beauty. But, for me, pretty is the opposite of ugly. My thinking is that if beauty does consciously elide ugliness and it exists in absentia, then how can ugliness be an antonym? An existence in absentia, is not the same as a shadow nagging to be acknowledged, because, as I wrote above, I believe beauty does consciously acknowledge ugliness in the process of elision. It is not ignored...it's just not given any more attention and due to acknowledgement it does not demand it from beauty. Is beauty an example of non-duality, a unified concept?

                                   The Beginning Of Everything Oil on linen 90 x 180 cm

Was beauty present at the instant life began, at the Big Bang or whatever it was that set everything in motion? I suspect it was. And, this Beauty now exists as some kind of human race memory, maybe deeply buried in our DNA code. Maybe that's why we sometimes have Ah Ha moments, that stir our inner core reminding us of something, often propelling us onto new thoughts and actions, but always providing us with joy and hope.

Gate Oil on linen 100 x 100 cm 2011

Previous BEAUTY posts:

 

Beauty Gives Hope A Chance

 

Beauty As A Portal

 

 

 

QUIVER

My forthcoming exhibition of new work

17-29 April

Graydon Gallery

Merthyr Rd, New Farm, Brisbane

Gate [above] will be in the exhibition. The Beauty Of is already sold! And, The Beginning Of Everything was in my last solo exhibition and was also a finalist in the invitation only Tattersall's Landscape Art Award 2011. After QUIVER'S opening night I am planning to bring in some other paintings, to have a kind of...stock room...where people can discover. It is actually really frustrating that older paintings are often only exhbited once or twice...hardly gives a chance for people to see them, let alone decide to buy them! 

NEWS

I discovered another blogger who likes my work. And, I like his too. You might like to check out John Simpson's unfolding story 

The Propagational Library  

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com

BEAUTY AND THE VORTEX

Finding The Light Oil on linen 100 x 70 cm

http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/07/finding.html

I have uploaded some of the paintings that will be in my forthcoming exhibition VORTEX. Here's a short statement I have written for the exhibition:

Solo exhibition exploring vortexes, taking the viewer to cosmological extremes and to intimate spiritual places. The turmoil of the outer vortex, depicted in images of environmental degradation, is balanced by images of the inner vortex where stillness offers a place to listen to ourselves. VORTEX traverses distance by playing with perspective and using the age old trans-cultural/religious tree-of-life as a guiding motif which explores the intimate and vast, both temporally and spatially.

Regular readers of my BLOG will know that I have been writing about vortexes for some time now. The statement above just touches upon some of my thoughts. It is always quite difficult to condense something, one is somewhat obsessed by, into a short statement!

I see VORTEX as being a coherent exhibition with paintings exploring the beauty of stillness at the core of the vortex...and other paintings exploring the turmoil on the outer vortex, particularly in regards to the 'madness' I see happening with CSG mining on prime food producing farmland. AND, regular readers will know my thoughts there!

OUTER VORTEX
Yet, my paintings exploring the turmoil of the outer vortex are not ugly...well I don't think they are! I see beauty as offering hope. I cannot see the point in creating more ugliness or reminding people of it in an unrelenting way. There's enough in the mass media to remind us of the plunderous and degrading activities which the human race has inflicted upon the Earth. Image after image, seemingly imploring for enlightened solutions lose their impact after awhile. We become desensitised and in the process we feel neutered, as if the problems are SO huge there is no way we can make a difference. Now.... this is where beauty has the power to uplift as it reminds people of paradise... that if beauty can still exist, even in imagination, the potential to resurrect any 'paradise lost' is still there.

One painting of the 'madness', which will be in VORTEX, is the painting below, called $oils Ain't $oils...Anymore! This painting questions value by using small $ signs to signify water, soil and coal. It's prophecy is not attractive, yet I feel that beauty still stretches its hand out through the turmoil to the viewer, in a way which stimulates hope rather than destroying it. http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/12/oils-aint-oilsany-more.html

As I have written a number of times before, I prefer to consciously elide ugliness. This means that ugliness, and all its contingent erosive attributes, exists in absentia in my work, thus negating criticisms of naivity. Indeed, as regular readers of this BLOG know, I have spent many years living in rural Queensland, and whilst I am not a soil or water expert, I do arrive at this point in my life, with decades of practical experience and observations, which are visually parley in my paintings.

I have previously written about beauty http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/03/beauty.html

$oils Ain't $oils...Anymore! Oil on linen 70 x 100 cm

http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/12/oils-aint-oilsany-more.html

VORTEX CORE

The painting at the top of the page 'Finding the Light' and the three paintings below, were all inspired by my imaginatings of what it might be like to be present inside a vortex at its core. The first time I closed my eyes and imagined the stillness, I felt calm. As I have written before, this stillness offers a quiet where we can hear things we did not know we could hear, see things we did not know we could see, and feel things we did not know we could feel. For me this beautiful sentient place is a place of hope, where the human race may find answers to questions it did not know to ask.

Compassion Oil on linen 100 x 100 cm 2010

                           http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/07/compassion.html

Colour Of Stillness Oil on linen 100 x 60 cm

http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/10/knowledge-of-stillness.html

                                                                  Hovering At The Centre Oil on lnen 30 x 30 cm

                               http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/08/hovering.html

SUPERCONDUCTORS

If art can trigger the collective imagination, to take us to places of stillness where hearing, seeing and feeling things we were previously unaware of is possible, then art could be called a superconductor!

Here's an explanation from http://www.superconductors.org/INdex.htm of what a superconductor literally is:

If art can be seen as a superconductor, we can now think about what might create resistence to render it impotent and inert. Maybe ugliness, in a way which regurgitates mass media's reportage, is one resistor? And, maybe beauty is a potent transistor?

Concepts like this tickle my imagination and have done so for a long time. My Dad is a HAM radio enthusiast and I grew up with electronic bits and pieces, plus our farm was uniquely identifiable by Dad's tall aerials. Our cars were always equipped with HAM radios, Dad made our first TV in the early 60s, and our first record player also. Here's some info for those of you who do not know what HAM radio is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio  AND...One of my brothers is in IT and his current specialty is supercomputing.

In another post I will write about art and its potential to be a superconductor for cultural diplomacy. Unfortunately, 'show and tell' type attitudes are resistors. I draw some of my thoughts from my own experiences exhibiting in London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Seoul.

VORTEX

22 Feb - 6 March 2011:  Graydon Gallery, Merthyr Rd, New Farm, Brisbane. I will be at the exhibition daily 10 am -6 pm, so it is a chance for me to chat to people. I had a great time chatting at my exhibition FRISSON in March this year.

Cheers,

Kathryn

http://www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com/

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http://au.linkedin.com/in/kathrynbrimblecombe