The beauty of the beast
"Our task must be to free ourselves...to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty"
- Albert Einstein
If nature is the template for beauty - the artist's palette if you will - then animals are the individual living works of art. The animal kingdom is the basis for the DM Collection, combined to great effect with the creatures' natural habitat depicted within the beast rather than the usual other way around.
Shop the DM Fawn in a Meadow design or Daniel's designs by Collection.
Animals are walking, squawking master pieces that have been crafted through evolution over millions of years, appearing in all shades, shapes and sizes, and surpassing all realms of imagination and creative possibilities. To us humans, they are a seemingly never-ending stream of inspiration and wonder, and even though the likes of a fearsome tiger can fill us with fear, they still captivate us with their natural beauty.
As you may be aware, reproduction is at the heart of all living things and in the world of animals it too takes 'two to tango'. Some animals such as the male deer will physically compete with one another, where the winning stag literally takes all and claims access to every doe-eyed doe in the herd. A stag may not be as pretty looking as the doe (who has an unmistakable nurturing feminine beauty), but to us humans (and I'm sure the does too) you can't help but appreciate the masculine appearance of a stag in his prime. This suggests there is beauty in physical power: after all, it depicts health and strength which are good genes for any deer to pass on, and us humans as fellow mammals must admire such characteristics.
But not all animals push their weight about to attract or claim a mate: other animals use their own natural aesthetic beauty to woo their heart's desire. This is most apparent in the world of birds, where more often than not it's the male bird who has to impress, and so you'll usually find them to be the more striking of the feathered sex. Take the peacock in full psychedelic bloom for example, or the striking strutting rooster, even the male blackbird with its jet black feathers and bright yellow beak is arguably more attractive than its brown female counterpart - which isn't black at all!
One theory as to why colourful male birds have evolved to attract females is that their colourful plumage - albeit very stylish - actually demonstrates keen survival abilities (good genes once again). The brighter the colours, the more noticeable a bird will be to predators. This suggests that they must have the physical skills and nous to avoid becoming someones dinner. I would also add that the song of a male bird, (which completely blows his cover), demonstrates exactly the same nerve.
In the next concluding instalment of this beauty blog series we will be taking a look at the polarity of beauty: for beauty resides in both the light and the dark, in danger and safety, in happiness and woe: the yin and the yang.
Read Harry's previous blogs on beauty: the Eye of the Beholder and Universal Beauty