I make a fairly decent living as a visual artist - a potter. That must mean that other people think I create objects of beauty. I guess they wouldn't spend their money on them if they thought they were ugly. But I don't believe I have ever created anything truly beautiful. I try to create something beautiful every time I go into my studio, but I never succeed. Beauty for me is a Platonic ideal. It is a goal, but one which is beyond the capabilities of mere mortals like me to achieve. The best we can hope for is to eliminate ugly and hope that the result is an approximation of beauty.


I can see beauty in the works of other artists such as Brancusi's Bird in Space or Dale Chihuly's blown glass, but I wonder if any artist's work has ever lived up to his own personal ideal of beauty.