Beauty: Painting the house
16 September 2007 2 Comments
I painted the outside of our house today. The color was brighter than we expected, brighter than the paint chip. With the trim color, however, it will look great — very bungalow-esque.
After I got enough paint on the siding to tell how it was going to look — the first sprayer I rented wasn’t working — I stepped back to take it in. It caused me to remember how important the idea of beauty is to me. I agonize over visual details that, besides driving my wife up the beautifully purple-painted bungalow walls, most people never notice. And I don’t consider myself much of a detail-oriented person, but with respect to the information my eyes take in I suppose I am just that.
I don’t pretend to be able to define what is beautiful or know what is Beautiful (notice the capital “B”), but I do seek out the idea and attempt to create objects and environments that reach for the most pulchritudinous experience.
I’m writing this because it plays into my thoughts on going after an MFA. It reminds me that my interests really are much broader than studio art. An MFA may still be the best way to go, to further my ability to define and render beauty, but at this point I can’t be certain.
And, frankly, I probably won’t ever be certain.
Every time I go to the campus of the School of the MFA to buy paper I want to go back to school for my MFA. Then I look at the price and I think otherwise. Not that I have the time anymore even if we could afford the 50K pricetag.
And I have no desire to be an art professor which is what most people seem to (try) do with such a degree other than bragging rights on their vitae. I enjoy teaching the occasional low key class, but nothing more than that.
But the campus is so idyllic it is very enticing.
Were I to be a professor it would likely need to be in a Christian context, but I do have this desire. According to a personality test I took last year, I’m good an “imposing my views” on other people!