Here is a video today I made on the topic, for those interested
As a painter or as a conduit to receive images, I ask myself the question, is my current creation of art transforming myself? I also apply that to my thinking. What is the use of thinking and creating if it does not transform in some way? Or with others what do I want them to experience through my art? Because I prefer art to engage other human beings. So that's being aware of cultures, symbolism, psychology, philosophy and myths. Though, we would have to describe what 'transformation' means as well as describe how interpretation is used through the subjects above (and as you mentioned , what is 'beauty'?).... Side note, I have come to an awareness of even if I have the most well thought out system, with accurate logic and elegant in it's presentation, why does that somehow not satisfy me? Where is the living-ness, the aliveness? What is this?...pause...What is this that feels some depth? If we stare at the finger (language) that points at the moon we might mistake the finger as the moon.
And
"Look at the cherry blossoms!
Their color and scent fall with them,
Are gone forever,
Yet mindless
The spring comes again." ~Ikkyu
And
Towards the ugly, or not pretty....Martel, J.F.. Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice (Manifesto)
"The work of art is apolitical and free of moralism. “The artist,” Wilde said, “is free to express everything.” It is precisely the absence of political and moral interest that makes art an agent of liberation wherever it appears. Art opposes tyranny by freeing beauty from the clutches of the powers of this world. True beauty is
not pretty. It is
a tear in the façade of the everyday, a sudden revelation of the forces seething beneath the surface of things. Only the revelation of beauty can save our world. The artist is always and for all time a seer, and artistic creation is always and for all time an act of prophecy. The artist does not choose the prophecy. Rather, the prophetic shines through her work. It comes from elsewhere."
Though, I don't entirely agree with this. As a painter, I tend to think I'm a facilitator of myth images, or inviting new ways to 'see' or experience the world towards others- to ignite the fire of imagination within others.
And
a Japanese aesthetic with Buddhism, (maybe, beyond concepts of beauty and ugliness?)...."True beauty exists in the realm where there is no distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, a realm that is described as, "prior to ugly and ugliness" as a state where "beauty and ugliness are as yet unseparated". There can be no true beauty, then, outside that realm where beauty and ugliness have not yet begun to conflict with each other." ~ Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman