For the Love of Beauty
About For the Love of Beauty
Thank you so much for visiting!
As an artist, utilizing a variety of processes, as well as a catechist, it is my desire to help people deepen their experience of God through beauty in the Catholic tradition.
Why Beauty?
An Ancient Hunger Ever New
For the Love of Beauty (Propter Amorem Pulchritudinis, in Latin) is inspired by St. Augustine’s reference to God as ‘Beauty’ in his Confessions (X, 27) when he writes, “Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, so ancient and so new.”
His name for God is both poetic and revealing. Beauty has been defined, since ancient times, as that which is perfectly ordered or that which is as it should be. Both definitions reflect a profound truth about God: that He is perfection, and His perfection is beautiful.
God intentionally designed us to be moved by beauty so that we might be drawn to Him and experience His presence.
It is for the love of Beauty, that I pursue my vocation:
To create works that elevate and inspire the soul to respond to the allurements of He who is Beauty,
so as to be reunited in Him, in Love,
as it should be.
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.”
Hosea 2:14
My Current Projects
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I am currently working to develop new collections of sacred, allegorical, and secular images using a variety of media to include drawings (pencil, charcoal, pastel), paintings (egg tempera, oil, watercolor, encaustic), and photography (traditional and photo-encaustic).
I am also creating lines of inspirational prayer beads and jewelry, that help sensitize the soul to God’s Divine attractions through small daily interactions with beautiful pieces that act as opportunities for grace and a way of remaining in prayer throughout the day.
“Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”
1 Thess 5: 16-18
You will find my current art projects and ideas on praying with art as they unfold in My Latest blog postings. In my Shop you will have opportunities to purchase original art and reproductions for sale, inspirational jewelry, and unique prayer cards.
I love using art to teach from and to pray with, and so I am also producing educational materials using my own work or images, and ideas from the broader world of classical art, to help foster confidence and pleasure in experiencing God through beauty.
“At the sight of beauty, the soul grows wings.”
— Plato
My Goals
My desire is to help people learn how to more deeply engage with an image, to know how to read it so to speak, but in a visual sense, for the purpose of stimulating a more personal, heartfelt interaction that leads to Christ.
This desire is rooted in the fundamental understanding that Jesus was made Man precisely to make the invisible God, visible, so that man might have a clear way to have an intimate relationship with Him. Jesus did not come just so that we might know more information about God, but to be in personal relationship that is experienced in a tangible, sacramental way.
Learning how to experience beauty in created things is a rich, not to mention pleasurable endeavor, -as it should be, that gently develops pathways, through God’s allurements of beauty, in order to have that vibrant relationship with Him.
It necessarily follows that these pathways of beauty deepen the experience of receiving the sacraments and participating in the sacred liturgy as well. Therefore, sensitizing the soul to beauty is not a luxury, nor can it’s role be dismissed or reduced.
“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.”
— Pope St. John Paul II, Letter to Artists
My hope is to at least in some small ways, cut through some the most common obstacles to experiencing art and beauty, so that beauty is experienced as it is meant to be: an alluring splendor creating accessible and joyfully pathways into the heart of God.
Thank you again for stopping by! If you have any Questions or Comments, let me know below.
-Renata Grzan Wieczorek, MA Theology (see professional background).
“Better witness is born to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with…. No. Christians must not be too easily satisfied. They must make their Church into a place where beauty – and hence truth – is at home. Without this the world will become the first circle of Hell.”
— Cardinal Ratzinger
From the Forward to: The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty by John Saward
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