"Much of the beauty that arrises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium." (Henri Matisse)

When the nearly uncontrollable urge to create something new in my space hits me, (as it does every few months...or weeks) I often like to challenge myself to only use what I have. Like everyone, I can succumb to the craving for more stuff, things I don't actually need at all. One of the ways I combat that is to force myself not to buy anything when I get the itch to rearrange. It is both frustrating and thrilling to have work and rework things until it's just right. Most of the time I walk away more satisfied than if I had bought something new. It happened just last night with my office space and I couldn't be more pleased with the result. My limitations have the potential to make room for more creativity if I let them. In many ways, confines are where the an artist can find the most inspiration. I never thought of limitations as a gift until a few days ago. I started thinking that maybe the things we feel limit us are actually where our lives and art can be the most authentic and beautiful.

Beauty has such a profound affect on the soul. So much of what we find beautiful is closely tied to our identity, such as certain colors, music or visual design - things influenced by our personal taste. And yet, there are things known to be universally beautiful, most of which are found in nature, like a fading sunset, grandiose snow-capped mountains or the vastness of the ocean's swell. Somehow the human soul craves beauty, some perhaps more than others, but we all need it in some form nonetheless. We are all curators of what we find beautiful. We surround ourselves with it. We long for it, desire more and yearn to be swept up in it. We want to posses beauty in a myriad of forms; to be beautiful ourselves, to create beauty, to own beautiful things and to behold beauty in our surroundings, just to name a few.

It is almost certain that most of us would fall into a deep depression if we were deprived of beauty. No music. No art. No nature. No words. No people. If I think back the times I felt most sad, it was because my soul's vision of beauty was somehow hindered or blocked. Whatever it may have been was the opposite of beautiful. And the cure? Finding beauty again. A trip to the seaside. Listening to a song. Reading a few uplifting  words. Time with another soul we find soothing. Creating something lovely. Beauty. It's essential to to any sort of glad existence.