While I was on a journey through Japan, I had the urge to discover & etch out the kind of beauty that I felt most deeply attracted to in life. The word “beauty” for me is not only visual, it’s a combination of exiting, even pleasurable combination of sensations reflecting from things. Objects, environments or even ideas. They make me feel connected to people & the world surrounding them. The feeling we all know as “good, right and true”.
Natural, coarse, raw, textured, rough on the touch. These are the words I would use to describe beauty around me. Often these states are reactive to the effects of mother nature. I love the tentative, delicate traces left by the sun. wind, heath and cold. My fascination with the language of rust, tarnish, warping, cracking, shrinking, scarring, peeling and other forms of wearing down of things is, for some people, hard to understand.
Gust Bertels – Founder of Sempre Life