Editor’s Letter | A Focus on Beauty

By Kristin Hoerth

This story was featured in the February 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art February 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Earlier this winter, at the end of a long and difficult day, I got into my car and headed home. It was the evening rush hour in Denver, and traffic was snarled and slow everywhere I looked. The day’s news headlines were playing on the radio, and each story seemed to be more distressing than the last. My mood was going downhill quickly. So, before it could get any worse, I took a deep breath. I changed the radio from news to classical music. Then I exited the eight-lane highway full of semitrailers and headed instead to a two-lane road that winds up and down through the foothills of the Front Range, with a view of the distinctive Flatiron rock formations near Boulder. Gradually, the beauty of the scenery I was looking at and the music I was listening to helped ease my grim mood.

I was reminded of this experience when I read something Cody DeLong said in his interview with writer Gussie Fauntleroy this month (his story begins on page 62): “We live in a really chaotic world with a lot of negative things that people can get wrapped up in,” he commented. “But one of the things art brings to us is this: We can choose to live a graceful life. We can choose to focus on the good. Art gives us that moment of reflection and shows us there’s still a lot that is good and beautiful in the world.”

That rang true for me, as I’m sure it does for many of you, and I’ve been returning to the idea frequently over the past few weeks. The modern world, with all its struggle and turmoil, gives us far too many opportunities to see what is negative. But the elegance of form, composition, and expression that we find in fine art can lift our spirits above the din. Just as beautiful music and a beautiful landscape made a difference for me in the car that day, the beauty in visual art brings goodness and grace into our lives as often as we pause to study and appreciate it.

And “beauty” doesn’t necessarily need to mean the conventional beauty of things like a pristine sunset or a vase of perfect flowers. Artists can create beauty in brush strokes, colors, shapes, and edges, no matter whether their subject is a mountain meadow or a parking lot, a careful tableau or a cluttered table.

My hope is that you will find a great deal of beauty to appreciate in this issue and every issue, and that it will help you, in a small way, to live a graceful life.

This story was featured in the February 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art February 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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