There are some discussions that are evergreen and periodically need to be shared again. The incredible resources we have access to to shower our children in beauty via art, architecture, online explorations of other places in the world, poetry, etc. give us no viable excuses. We simply must make the time to show them the many wonders God Himself created and that have been created by His goodness through the creatures who bear His Image. With that in mind, I hope you enjoy listening to this wonderful discussion with Dallas. I am grateful to be of service and bring you quality homeschool and homemaking content. I receive compensation through subscribers, curriculum sales, and affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Recommended Resources: Theology and the Arts Home Education Mornings in Florence This Beautiful Truth Seeing the Form (Glory of the Lord) Vincent’s Starry Night and Other Stories: A Children’s History of Art The Purpose of Beauty in a Charlotte Mason Education To experience beauty is to experience a deep-seated yes to being, even in its finitude and its moments of tragedy, and such an affirmation is possible only if being is grounded, born by a reality that is absolute in value and meaning. In short, the experience of finite beauty and a spiritual being implies the unavoidable although perhaps from the medically unconscious co-affirmation of an infinite beauty, the reality that we call God. – Richard Viladesau, Theology and the Arts. Lara:Welcome, friends. Today, we are having a very fun chat with our friend Dallas Nachtigall from Bestowing the Brush about beauty as a vessel for truth. Dallas, will you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you? Dallas:Hello, thank you much, Lara, for having me on. I am honored once again to talk to you. I am Dallas Nachtigall. I am owner of Bestowing the Brush. You’ve probably seen me on Instagram. I like to talk about art, about drawing specifically. I love that discipline, but I love to talk about theology and art as well. When Lara asked me to come on and talk about this topic, I said a hearty yes, because it is just right up my alley. I’m very thrilled to get to talk about this and get to just take this idea apart and put it back together again. Lara:I love that. We are both fans of Charlotte Mason. Charlotte Mason really rebelled against the common educational thoughts of her time, and greatly influenced by her fate, she developed what I consider to be a remarkable educational philosophy that is still admired by many people today. A major focus of her educational method includes beauty through art, music, great literature and even rhetoric. Today, we’re going to discuss how beauty is a vessel for Truth with a capital T. In Ecclesiastes 3:11, we are told: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” I love that. It’s just so big. Dallas:It is. That really speaks to God’s… His strength and he’s ever-present. He’s omnipotent. He’s everywhere at one time. Lara:Yes. He is. I think it shows too how much He loves us that He does make things beautiful. He brings beauty from the ashes, and he gives us all these little glimpses of just how much he delights in us by the things that he gives us in nature, the relationships that he gives us, the way that he gives us peace, even when the world may be crazy like it is right now. We’re going to dive in, and we’re going to talk first about what makes something beautiful. This is one of those things, I think, that people get caught up in. “Well, what really is beauty? What is art? What makes art beautiful?” Especially in the Charlotte Mason tradition, it’s not just art, but it’s art. It’s music. It’s even math. We have order versus chaos or music versus noise. If you’ve got preschoolers, that could be intermingled. Then you’ve got art versus post-modernism. As an artist, what really stands out to you? What makes something aesthetically beautiful? Dallas:In my opinion, Lara, I think that beauty has an order to it. Beauty has a set of before-determined principles that make it beautiful, and God has written these into the world with what He’s created. We can look at the creation, and we can say it’s beautiful, first of all, because God made it, but second of all, that it follows His created order, its colors, and its proportions are very pleasing to our eyes. I believe that good art will mirror and reflect that which is created. It may not be a total copying of the creation, but it’s directly modeled after creation. Whether that means that it’s a representation of a landscape or something in nature or taking the principle of something being very pleasing in thirds on a canvas, or that there is hierarchy, that there’s something larger, and that there’s something repeated somewhere, that there’s perspective going on. There’s light and dark. There are all these different themes that God has set into the world that make us really awe at His power and His design. Lara:There’s an awe that is missing in our current culture. People have become so self-centered. I don’t mean selfish, but they literally are focused on themselves, and so it makes it hard to look out and hard to look up and hard to look around when you’re looking in. Dallas:Absolutely. Lara:It’s important for us to appreciate the gifts that we’re given, to love the things that the Lord has given to us as blessings, obviously, not to the point like we’re putting them up on a pedestal, not like a druid loves a tree. It’s important, I think, for us to remember that we are supposed to be awed. One of the things that our society has done, as we have gotten so busy, is that we have forgotten that part of worship is being in awe. It talks about fear and trembling, not necessarily because you’re afraid, but because you are just so awed by the power, by the grace, by the mercy. I think part of looking at art is also admiring, worshiping, loving the Lord for who He is and what He is, and recognizing how much He loves us through the beauty that He gives us. I think it’s just something that we have lost a little bit as a culture. I feel like if we could go backward a little bit and appreciate art more like the people that were back there staring at the frescoes as Giotto was painting them, or watching Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I mean, can you imagine? That would be incredible. We have these… Reflections, I think, is the perfect term for that. These reflections of creation that really reflect the awesomeness of our creator, and that’s amazing. That gets into our next point like, how it makes us respond. Do you think that how a particular piece of art or music or literature causes us to respond, does that tell us whether or not it’s really something that’s beautiful? Dallas:I think it can, but I think it also matters how you’ve cultivated in your students, drawing their attention to beauty and truth in all areas of life. I often find that it really can reflect the character of the person who is looking at the art and what they’re interested in and what their motivations are to hear them talk about the art, because someone can get something completely different out of the piece of art than someone else. I always think of that scripture to the clean, all things are clean, the idea that to the pure, all things are clean. Even as we’re raising our children and teaching them, we can have a magnanimous outlook on people and on life, and we can have an optimistic outlook on life that is life-giving, and that we are drawn to the light so we automatically see the light, and we see worthy and good ideas coming from art that maybe someone else is blind to. I also think that there is an aspect of art, and it’s so weird to talk about it because it really is something that’s spiritually conveyed somehow. Lara:Yes. Dallas:That’s the weird thing about art is that you’re sharing in this common expression that the artist has made, so you’re like almost in the room with them, getting to know them a little bit and hearing from them. I believe that there is art that is really not worthy of our time, and there is art that is worthy of our time. I like something that Ruskin says here. He says this in The Laws of Fesole. He says, “The art of man is the expression of his rational and disciplined delight in the forms and laws of the creation of which he forms a part.” I really liked that because it is a rational, disciplined delight that this artist has, and he is expressing that, and he’s a part of the creation. Not only is he looking at the creation, he is also a part of the creation. It’s almost like he has this responsibility to show beauty and to show his disciplined delight in the creation that God has given to us. Lara:I love that so much. I think that’s absolutely perfect. For us, for our family, a lot of times if we’re looking at different artworks, or if I’m previewing things to show the boys, I feel like one of my go-to filters is, “Is it raising our minds to things above, or is it pulling us towards worldly things”, which is very much with Philippians 4:8. There’s another John Ruskin quote that I really like that applies to that, but it says “fine art is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man go together.” That says it right there. Lara:If you’re looking at a piece of artwork, trying to decide if it’s something that’s right for your family to view, or if it’s something you want hanging on your walls, or if it’s a piece of music, you want your children listening to the lyrics of, and music is a big thing in our family. I was shocked when I finally hit the age where I realized what a lot of the lyrics in the songs I grew up with said. It’s al
