Beauty and Perception - Dwan Thompson

When we look at other people, animals, or objects everyone looks at them differently. We let our eyes and emotions take control and sometimes things are perceived differently than others. Our past experiences and places we have been dictates how we would feel about certain things. Things that are beautiful cannot always be seen as beautiful to all people because everyone looks at things in different manners. This is why I chose to look at perception and beauty together.

   (Image 1)

Beauty is defined on many different levels but the one that stood out to me is that beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction. It is said that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. To me this means that not all things are seen as beautiful to others. Just as image 1; to me this is peaceful, colorful, and free. I can see myself in this picture in ways that you may not, only because I perceived it differently.

Perception which is the process through a individual interprets sensory input’s including; sight- the way we perceive an individual by their body languages and a picture by the way it looks. The way we perceive others by their word, smell and taste is all on a scale of perception.  This is all related to how we look at arts and crafts. In a article called “Some thoughts about perception, communication, and disagreement” Allan N. Schwartz states that perception are colored by feelings or emotions and those emotions are often shaped by experiences. He also goes on to say that life is either beautiful or not- it’s all a matter of perception. This is why many react to things that are seen as beautiful because we let our eyes perceive and our emotions take over.

  (Image 2)   (Image 3)

Image 2 and 3 are two pictures that I remembered having when I was in grade school. Our art teacher put these in front of us and we were to describe what we saw. Image 2 was seen as either a glass or 2 people and image 3 was seen as either a old woman or young lady. Many of us like myself would rather see things like image 1 because it is nice or beautiful and easier to look at. So perception is how wee look at things and beauty is in the eyes of the beholder which is you.