Virginia Fine Art
“Our caution is not to become those who focus on beauty in order to dismiss tragedy or to disguise feelings of their own inadequacy. When we ourselves feel ugly and insignificant, or the pain of the world feels unbearable, it can be very comforting to talk of mountains and sunsets. We train our focus on beauty here or there—this poem, that architecture—because it is easier than bearing witness to our own story. We begin to gravitate not toward beauty but toward illusion. You are running from your own face. But this is not the way of wonder. Wonder requires a person not to forget themselves but to feel themselves so acutely that their connectedness to every created thing comes into focus. In sacred awe, we are a part of the story.”
—Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh