I have finally begun to make my peace with the relentless jumble of overhead wires and poles that define much of the skyline here in Los Angeles, after years of detesting and resenting them. Because of our occasional earthquakes, such utility lines cannot be buried beneath streets and sidewalks as they are in many other major cities. And so, we are forced to co-exist.

But at last, I began to see the poles and wires not as just an inevitable plague, but rather as vessels. Capable of transmitting their own kind of expected beauty, they carve and divide the planes of sky in constantly surprising abstract ways.

Featured colors in this painting:

• French Ultramarine
• Lunar Violet
• Cobalt Teal Blue
• French Ochre
• Cobalt Blue
• Imperial Purple

In that realization, another sort of awakening came to me as both a person and an artist. Beauty is not always to be found in the obvious or expected places. The same can be said for people or ideas or ways of being.

Beauty is not content to be so narrowly defined, and moreover, it cannot actually be found in what we see – but in how we choose or learn to see.

In other words, beauty does not so much exist within our subjects, but in how fully we are able to see and to feel our subjects. And only then, can we, as artists, turn our attention to how we are able to interpret those feelings on paper or canvas.