The Revolution of Beauty: Why Artists Are the True Builders of the Future

We are in the process of creating a retreat center here in Sarasota, Florida on the property we used to operate business from. It's 7.5 acres in the middle of Lakewood Ranch—an oasis of green pastures, running horses, and beautiful estates right in the heart of restaurants, shops, bars, farmer markets, and pilates studios. You can even walk to a giant outdoor shopping area within just 10 minutes.

We have been discussing how to create amazing work stations and art spaces within the large house for our future guests. I had a dream recently all about decorating this future retreat center.

I had ordered a bunch of long tables, which I then lined up in the living room by the open kitchen, setting stacks of art supplies in the center. I had wooden chairs lined up around the tables so everyone would have space to work or paint. It was very minimalist and efficient. No frills, just all about getting to work without distractions. Every space was the same, so no one would have any reason to fight over which place they occupied.

I was very proud of my efforts and vision for how the artists would navigate the space. In the dream, I showed Jake and Dimitra the space with a proud smile, but I immediately saw their faces frown and eyebrows squish together in disappointment.

“What’s wrong? Don't you like it?” I asked.

“Not at all!” said Jake, and Dimitra nodded along. “It's terrible. So ugly and boring and plain. It's not inviting at all. I wouldn't want to be here.”

He started moving all of the long rectangular tables outside. He magically pulled in multiple sizes of round tables, easels, and a variety of different unique chairs and rolling stools—some soft, some textured, some trimmed in fur or white leather.

Dimitra unrolled many different carpets and found lounging chairs, small sofas, and lamps. Everything was unique but fit together wonderfully. They littered “How-To” art books about techniques and color and pigments all around the rooms. Each shelf and table was filled with brushes and tools and paper. I saw bins of collage paper and inspiring found objects, beautiful bowls of seashells and fruit. Everything was just…beautiful.

Beauty was the priority.

They stood back from their work and said, “There, that's better. I could create in this space.”

I could see how much better it looked. It was a space I wouldn't ever want to leave—so many creative things to discover and explore, never-ending inspiration all around. I could also see that artists wouldn’t feel territorial or preferential to any one space within the rooms, but would want to move all around and explore. There would be an ongoing rotation of stations depending on how they felt that day.

Function or Form?

When I woke up from the dream, I knew God was speaking to me about Beauty. I have been studying this topic and listening to a lot of podcasts about beauty, architecture, the history of form, and the fall of culture. With the arrival of industry we left something behind.

In the dream, I had prioritized industry and equality over individuality and beauty. My space was static, redundant, stark, and uninspiring. Dimitra and Jake’s space was gorgeous, inspiring, and decadent. It was over the top, extravagant, enticing, and full of possibilities. It was not practical. It did not support uniformity.

During the Industrial Revolution, a false prophet arose and declared that “form follows function,” and Beauty was exiled. Through industry and the hyper-assembly of production, we have prioritized efficiency, profitability, and scale.

Everything from our homes to our municipalities, business buildings, and transportation have all succumbed to mass production and the sheer plainness and hideous sameness that celebrates equality over beauty. Cubicle blocks, cookie cutter houses, and the ergonomics of efficiency have dominated design. Nothing is beautiful anymore. Every modern city and town reeks of mundane shapes, redundant lines, and repetitive minimal lack.

Without beauty, without inspiration, without extravagance, we lose hope and forget the yearning for what is possible. We sink into the gray abyss of sameness, clinging to the safety of franchises and formulas, fighting through mediocrity just to taste a drop of creativity. No wonder resistance feels so heavy.

Called to Restore

As the infrastructure around us grows uglier and darker, our heads hang lower. Our city streets are filled with those who have given up or have been captured by the drug zombies. You can walk for miles and miles without a single encounter with Beauty. To find it, you have to fly to Europe, get into nature, or notice a hidden corner of a park.

In the ancient text of Zechariah, the writer says an angel showed him a world where the oppressive powers had come so that no man could lift his head. But then the angel showed him four craftsmen that came to terrify the powers, to scatter them and free the people so they could finally lift their heads. These are the artists that will come to save the earth by restoring beauty.

God used my dream to show me how Beauty transcends utility. Beauty is extravagant, even wasteful, because it spends itself on what is magnificent and gorgeous and luxurious beyond what is useful. Usefulness destroys beauty.

Beauty confounds a spirit of lack, responsibility, or holding back. It confronts productivity, efficiency, and utility. None of these are important at the expense of Beauty. Beauty is an expression of worship—a sacred pause where time itself stands still.

This devotion to what is beautiful is what will save us from ourselves. Our ego desires achievement and higher marks. It seeks recognition and affirmation from the people around us. Our ego thrives on comparison and being better than someone else.

Even if we don't want to think this way, these aspirations find their way in. Artists constantly battle self doubt. Someone is always better than us, and we are striving to measure up. We measure our progress by good and bad, right and wrong, or how close we get to realism. But at the heart of beauty is authenticity and raw, unbridled devotion to capturing that faint, ethereal vapor of what the Divine whispered into our imagination.

Our doubts and thoughts of not being good enough are products of our ego, the footprints of pride. The very act of creating beauty is a risk. It is apprehended at the edge of our intuition. There is nothing safe, sure, and predictable about beauty.

Your Seat of Beauty

As artists, we have been offered a seat. This seat is powerful and effective. It comes with tremendous favor and authority.

But we have been lied to about this seat. We have been told that if you take this seat, you will starve. This seat is selfish and frivolous. It's a complete waste of time. We have been warned to abandon it, go to a college factory, get your job in some vast corner of industry, slave it out for 45 years, retire for a couple of years, and die.

But that seat—the one you saw as a child—was always yours.

This is the seat of Beauty. It is from the seat of beauty that we will administrate the future. We will co-create what is next. We will paint the golden years ahead.

We are the craftsmen from the four corners of the earth that the angel saw coming over the mountain. We are the song, we are the poem, we are the vision. We carry the authority of heaven in our brush. We stand on the precipice of the new epoch, where we will rebuild the ancient ruins, restore the places long devastated, and renew the ruined cities.

From the Seat of Beauty we will proclaim freedom to the captives and return joy to the brokenhearted. All will wear a crown of Beauty. There will be no lack or despair, but instead joy and delight.

Your seat is yours alone. It is time to take your seat of Beauty and leave every lie in the dust of the past.

What kind of space would inspire you to create your best work?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!