Finding Beauty (snippets from the weekend)

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” -Camille Pissarro

I grew up in a mountain valley where beauty was obvious every day. My walk to the school bus on crisp winter mornings included pink mountain tops stained by the rising sun, untampered snowy fields spread out before me and evergreen trees under their white covering lining the lane behind me (the walk to catch the school bus was about two km (one mile) – don’t be surprised if I say it was uphill both ways).

I admit that when I first came to Slovakia nine years ago it was sometimes harder to see the beauty. I was a country girl in a post-Communist city. Yes, the centre has historic architecture and old-world charm, but I didn’t see the centre often. I remember going for a walk on a difficult day, overwhelmed by the ugly city with it’s ugly apartment buildings and ugly excuse of a park; I didn’t have a camera but even using my hands to frame a small moment of beauty helped me to calm down. They were there, I just had to change my perspective.

Those moments of beauty can be small – a spot of moss on a brick (how many times have I passed those bricks and never noticed?);

sometimes unexpected (rebar and dead clematis vines in front of a rusty barrel);

sometimes hopeful (even though winter wasn’t wintery, soon there will be leaves and fruit and fresh garden produce);

sometimes more fun and interesting than pretty;

sometimes it requires a second look. Two older women walked by as I was photographing a house paused mid-demolish, an eyesore. After cooing over sleeping twins, they asked if I was taking pictures because I wanted to buy the house. “No,” I answered, “it’s just supposed to be artistic.” They laughed, “That’s art!” referring, I suppose, to those unintelligible works of art that make you go ‘huh?’

But that is art, isn’t it? Finding beauty in the ordinary, or even in the eyesore?

How do you find beauty, visual or otherwise? Do you think beauty is important?

Shared at Sunday Social