“Beauty is no quality in things themselves:
It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them;
and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
David Hume: Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary.
Part I, Essay 23: Of the Standard of Taste (1741-2; 1748)
A few days ago a friend of mine got me thinking. He said he would like my Skies, their romanticism and calmness. But, he added, he would miss the spectacular. He had me doubting. Are my Skies missing something? Are they too ordinary? Not beautiful enough? And what is beauty anyway? I guess that is what it comes down to. What is beauty?
Is beauty only in the extraordinary? Does something or someone have to be different or unusual to be beautiful? I do not want to get too philosophical here, these questions have been asked before and there is no single answer; everybody has to find their own answer. But these questions brought me back to where I have been before: I want to show the world as it is. I want to find beauty in everything I see. If I find something spectacular, fine. But there is also so much beauty in our everyday life! We just seem to lose sight of that, seem to overlook it under all the impressions that rain down on us every day. And maybe our sense of beauty has changed with all that?
My friend also said that after having looked at the pictures on my website, he had started to look into the real sky more often again, amazed at the beauty he saw there, surprised that he had forgotten.