Last week I asked my freshman 2D Design class to define some pretty common words. “Line” was the first one. You should have seen the blank stares they shot back at me. If you ever want to have some fun with someone, ask them to define something simple like “color”. Watching these very intelligent and creative artists struggle to define words they’ve lived and worked with most of their lives reminded me of a similar problem I had this summer.
I’ve been wanting to do creative portraits of people I know for a long time but I was scared. I’m highly introverted and have a healthy fear of rejection. I guess we can thank all those girls from Boiling Springs Junior High and High School for that. When I finally got up the nerve to begin asking people if I could draw them, I wasn’t just afraid they’d say “no”. I was also scared because I knew why I wanted to draw them. The entire premise had to do with exploring the definition and boundaries of beauty.
I knew that beauty was not just a synonym for pretty. I had undergraduate and graduate professors who taught me that often what people mean when they say “beauty” is actually “sublime”. Things that are sublime are often so stunningly beautiful that they inspire a strong sense of awe. “Beauty” was pretty much a bad word amongst artists when I was in school and I had the sense that they had latched onto “sublime” as a workaround word.
In my academic research over the last 10 years, I’ve sort of danced around the edge of beauty. I leaned into the writings of Dave Hickey because I admired that fact that he forced an academic discussion of the forbidden word among artists. Other than that, I mostly stayed quiet and just kept secretly pursuing beauty in my work. I just didn’t realize that my work was quietly undermining my attempt to steer clear of addressing the idea of beauty out loud.
My shape-cut drawings on wood evolved into shapes of humans. Some were people I stole from the internet and some were self-portraits. I had included some images of people I knew in my drawings for many years, but I mostly tried to let them be characters and nothing more. By the end of last year, this was starting to change.
For many months, I knew that I wanted to start drawing portraits of people that I knew but I was too scared to ask them. Of course, I was scared of them saying no, but I was also scared of the pressure of drawing someone I knew. If you’ve done that, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, it’s terrifying. You can do everything right and still end up with a portrait that makes someone look like a goon. How could they not look at how you drew their teeth or eyes and go away wondering if they really look like that? You work on this thing for hours, days, weeks, and the whole time you’re just so anxious that they won’t like it. That it won’t really look like them.
When the Universe saw that I was dragging my feet too long, it decided to intervene. I was put in a position to draw a friend for a specific project with a tight deadline. I had little time to worry and the pressure just forced me to do the work without overthinking it. The drawing turned out really well and I think the model was happy with the result. That was the the little shove I needed.
The confidence gained on that project during the end of November 2025 gave me the confidence to ask to draw my first person for the new project. Since we’re being honest with one another, I’ll confess I asked the friend of the person I wanted to draw. It felt safer to have a little buffer zone. That project went well and the whole body of work about beauty was finally off the ground.
I’ve asked several people if they’d let me draw them for this project. The first 6 people all seemed happy to participate in the project. Asking people to model also means providing some fairly specific information. In 2026, I’m not asking people to roll up to my studio and “sit” for a portrait for several hours. Ain’t nobody got time for that, as they say. Instead, I’m sending an email with a lot of information and a few instructions. With that information, my models can decide a time that works best for them and interpret my instructions the way they want. They can have a friend take the photos or they can use a timer. Whatever makes them most comfortable will probably work for me. The one thing I think is important is that they feel completely themselves when they take the photos. If we have that, then I’m confident it will work…and it has. I’m very happy with all 6 of those modelling photos and the resulting works of art. These people are truly beautiful.
Then came lucky number 7. I was probably riding too high. Feeling too confident. It was summer, I was waking up without an alarm and staying up until 2:00 am. I was lounging on the porch most nights with the hummingbirds chirping and the cicadas and frogs backing them up. I was too comfortable, too confident. That’s when number 7 said “no”.
As I read the email response, my heart disappeared and was replaced by a strange void in my chest. I sat there with the breath knocked out of me just like the time that big kid hit me in Little League Football, except this time there was no part-time coach to walk up and look at me flat on my back, unable to breathe. Back then, he’d grab the waist of my football pants and lift my butt about a foot off the ground. Maybe it was medically sound or maybe it just scared the crap out of me, but either way, I started breathing again. I suppose I eventually started breathing again this time too. I read the email again and again looking for what was written between the words. It just wasn’t something this person wanted to subject themselves to and slowly I started to accept it.
But now what? How do I recover from that? I mean, this could be the end of me asking people. Why would I subject myself to the opportunity for rejection again?
Do y’all remember my aunt Laura Jean? She was so great. There’s probably a few posts about her on this blog if you scroll back through the years. For many years when I worked as a graphic designer, I would stop by her house to visit on my way home from work a couple of days each week. We were close and we could have some pretty honest conversations. She would tell me stories about how she spoke her mind at a meeting or to a friend and I’d laugh and lovingly make fun of her for speaking her mind like an old person. That was our joke. When you get old, you lose your filters and stop caring what people think. You just say stuff or do stuff and because you’re old, the people around you will either get out of your way or they’ll get over it.
Maybe I’ve crossed the age threshold at 54 years old. I emailed the would-be model back and thanked them for their honesty. I truly respect this person’s decision to protect their own comfort and peace of mind. And while all that was true, I had just finished a drawing and needed to start another pretty quickly. So I grabbed my phone and asked someone else that same day. Laura Jean would have made fun of me for that, but it worked. Old people just be out here saying stuff, I guess.
I spent so many hours drawing during this summer break from school. When I draw, there’s always music playing through the Bluetooth speaker. Even while I’m thinking through complex compositional problems, considering the potential interpretations of possible imagery and singing along to Olivia Rodrigo and Phoebe Bridgers, there’s a separate train of thought going in my brain about beauty. Some nights, I even had to stop drawing so I could do some research and reading on the topic.
Beauty may be visible, but it may also be invisible. Beauty can be heard, but it can also be felt. Beauty is not about how someone looks, although I could easily argue that everyone I ask to be a model for this project is visibly beautiful. This is where the sun comes into the conversation.
Many discussions of beauty find their way to sunrises or sunsets. These are visual spectacles that most humans can agree are beautiful. However, any conversation about a sunrise or a sunset quickly moves from the color of the clouds or the majesty of the sun over water and turns to talk of the stillness of the moment, the temperature of the air or the person the moment is shared with. It’s almost as if the placement of the sun simply created the opportunity for a special moment to be observed and appreciated.
Humans have long argued that beauty can’t be defined because beauty is subjective. Then came the magic MRI machine and she disagreed. Her scans of brain activity during exposure to various “beautiful” stimuli have proven that at least some beauty is not subjective.
Elaine Scarry writes that beauty has the power to “radically decenter” us. Beauty makes us pause, look and provides the opportunity for us to be moved. That’s definitely a sunset situation.
Plato and Aristotle taught that beauty has three properties: Truth, Beauty and Goodness. They argue that these three ideas point humans beyond the physical world. Beauty then, becomes spiritual. That sunset offers the opportunity to consider the smallness of humanity in a solar system and universe we can’t truly understand.
Dietrich von Hildebrand said that “beauty is essential” and that it is “quasi-sacramental”. I’ve sat with some of his ideas because he also argues that beauty can be broken down into two types: Beauty of the 1st power and Beauty of the 2nd power. Beauty of the 1st power is sensory delight. It looks good. It is the orange, pink and purple clouds with the yellow sun that causes you to stop in your tracks. It is the stranger on the street who is stunningly beautiful. Beauty of the 2nd power moves from the physical to the spiritual. This beauty radiates something more mysterious. Once you understand the physics behind how the photons bounce off of the dust and water vapor, you’re left trying to understand why humans even register beauty in their minds. Whey do humans respond to beauty? If it doesn’t have an evolutionary purpose, why do we marvel at sunsets? Beauty of the 2nd power is what keeps my mind turning while I draw.
The people I’m choosing to draw all have qualities that point towards Beauty of the 2nd power. There’s something more than their skin that makes them beautiful. It’s actions, beliefs, choices and ways of looking among a multitude of other things. It is magical and mysterious and worthy of thoughtful consideration. As always, as I draw and attempt to visually communicate that which is beyond words, I have ended up with more questions than answers. I’ve spent hours, days and weeks researching and contemplating only to end up with a blank look on my face wondering about the definition of a word we all know.
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