Beauty Wins (Part One of So Much Beautiful)

Featured Painting by Steve Cook

by Visit Ventura

  Ventura is filled with talented people who see this world in a beautiful, inspiring, uplifting way. And our world — here in Ventura and in places far beyond — remains filled with beauty and light. Lovely paintings, lovely poems, lovely songs. Lovely moments and gestures. As simple as a hand reaching down, or a lone bagpiper marching down an empty Glasgow street. It is good to remember the beautiful. So now and again we’re doing a simple thing. A snippet of beauty here, a snippet of beauty there. From Ventura. And from around the world. Because we are all in this together. And we are all elevated by beauty. So here is some beautiful courtesy of Ventura artist Steve Cook, whose paintings have lightened galleries and museums in Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Ojai and Ventura — and homes around the world. And an uplifting thought from one J.R.R. Tolkien, whose words have inspired generations. “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something…” — J.R.R. Tolkien