This is somewhere on the subway system in Stockholm. Made out of tape and blue plastic bags…

It’s beautiful the way that public art has been added to by a non-artist / non-designer to make something even more compelling and beautiful – in my eyes.

Also temporary, fleeting – if I hadn’t seen it and recorded it, the unknown ‘maker’ would never have been given a chance to share his/her ‘work’ – and the wall may never have gotten the chance to be seen this way, as more than a simple functional repair job…

 And look how nicely the plastic was taped up! Such pride and care.

Mornings are some of the most beautiful things in the world to me…from the birds singing in the hidden gardens of the West Village in NYC, to the beautiful colors of Mother Nature slowly unveiling themselves, silently, to the perfectly orchestrated routines at the coffee shop next door, to the majestic reverence of the Moon to the Sun ready to rise, to the peaceful paradise of a beach somewhere far in the world…Mornings are unique, special, intimate, universal and magical. They are the reflection of new beginnings, new inspirations and the perfect demonstration of life, light and beauty.

Portrait of Emilie by Garance Dore

Our relationship to space and routine is altered when we travel and find ourselves lost, or on a personal journey and the familiar is replaced with fear of the unknown.

It waits here in these clouds of fog: small slices of beauty in idle and in expectation…

Awakening fills our perception in the un-packaging, the process of discovery and finally with the « ah-ha » moment. This moment reveals a crossing and what was just a slice grows to reveal an entirely new experience.

Beauty is exponential. It is a landslide existing beyond the realm of control. An experience is never the same twice if we open our hearts and minds to look beyond the routine and the spaces we live.

When I work with design and architecture, I find there is a delicate balance between the physical entity and that of discovery. I prefer to leave more room for the awakening while diminishing the importance of the thing respectively. Working in this way – balancing and bouncing between forces – a symbiotic relationship between human and the design is formed.

Living in this question…a sense of wonder, wholeness…a quiet warm spacious quality.
Drawn back to this space…moments of refuge.
The idea and the experience of beauty, both nurturing this qualities life…in experiencing beauty…reconnecting and awakening this quality in myself and expanding it in the world.
Knowing this quality is within me as I can recognize it in the world…
This spacious question…a moment of refuge, allowing this quality to grow …
An experience of now
An experience of beauty.

I love this picture of Audrey Hepburn with an adorable doe in a grocery store….
I find this totally surreal, so sweet, full of love, so full of beauty. It moves me deeply.

Beauty is the Unexpected.

Beauty talks to your heart before reaching your consciousness.

If you’re not suprised, it is more about « perfection », or « achievement ».

Beauty is everywhere.

But Beauty is not easy and has its dark side as well.

Beauty is a comet, a galaxy and a black hole.

This picture of the Ocean is Beauty to me. It is serenity, balance and grace at the same time. It’s effortless, it’s sensual. It is perfect.

© Hiroshi Sugimoto, « Seascape ».

I don’t know why this picture moves me so much. Although this is a spontaneous picture, we somehow get the feeling it has been precisely styled. The red of the blanket on the left, the objects on the ground…The little Peter Pan boy, the bits and pieces of the chair on the right…All this could be a stylist work. The children’s posture is so innocent. And the cat looks like it is going to deliver some kind of message. The more I look at this image, the more I try to imagine where this stone pathway is leading to, I am trying to guess the enigma when observing the toys, wondering if the roses climb all the way to the sky…this is a really random, daily picture. But beauty radiates. And this is what touches me the most in life: recognize beauty even when it’s hidden into common things. 

To me, the most beautiful thing is skin because it is a portrait of life. I visited the Lucian Freud portrait exhibition in London a few months ago and that made me even more obsessed with it! I will be doing an exhibition of skin scents in August at the Edinburgh Fashion Festival.

© Brett Rubin

I chose this picture because San Francisco is the place where my metamorphosis has started. And because behind the fog that you learn to love when you live here, you can feel that the warm sun is chasing you, never far, it’s coming, even in those darker moments. The Metamorphosis is in process.