I’ve spent years coming up with ideas to interpret beauty. Thing is, I’m running out of ideas.

Which brings me back to something that happened years and years ago. No, actually decades. but we won’t talk about that.

I was staying with an artist, who I considered to be a mentor. Considered? She actually was a mentor, although she kept telling me not to refer to her as that….she wanted to be considered a friend.

It was sort of a communal living situation. Other creative adults also stayed there. One young woman, who seemed even-tempered started discussing her work. Suddenly, she took on a manic eyed expression on her face and said “I prefer to find beauty in ugliness”.

So, I went back to my aim of finding beauty in beauty, and that was that.

But now, after years and years….actually decades, but we won’t talk about that….I’m rethinking things.

The only thing that appealed to me in the last couple of months, was ugly. So, I decided to go for it.

I struggled. It was like the old days when I would do a drawing over and over again, not getting it right, and go over it again. I tried adding an empty billboard to this. Empty didn’t seem right so, I decided to add a billboard with fading letters to it. I’m ashamed to say, but I will say, that the faded words I was going to put were “I’d like to teach the world to sing”. Yup, bad. So, try again I did.

It was a scene at the railroad station, and ugly as hell. I don’t know what drew me to it, but it was ugly. So, I decided to find beauty in it.

After all my struggle, I’m not sure if I was successful or not. So, here it is:

Another milestone for this year….summer is almost over. It always reminds me of a sad time, and as I look at my old work from this time…..

A parade of finding beauty in ugliness.