"Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful." -- Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (p. 44)
Early in my studio practice, I listened to a lot of audio books. One audio book, Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces, moved me to such a degree that I had to read it again in book form. The above quote about looking, beauty and necessity resonated with me. I had just graduated from NSCAD and some of the conversations that I was "chewing on" were about the place of beauty in art. At that time beauty was taboo. Some leading artists and curators spoke against beauty, especially prettiness. Was the thinking that there is a fine line between beauty and pretty, so let's just do away with both?
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