My Secret Public Journal

Before I saw the valley, I saw the colors.

That was my first experience of Rebecca Stenn's Odell Valley (2026). I was immediately drawn to the gradations of blue stretching across the upper portion of the painting, moving from the darkness of the upper sky toward the pale light resting above the distant hills. Beneath them, broad expanses of gray establish the mountains, while greens, yellows, oranges, and reds unfold across the valley floor. Each band possesses its own character, yet none exists independently of the others. The colors overlap, interrupt, complement, and occasionally challenge one another. Their boundaries suggest movement even as the composition remains remarkably still.

Only after appreciating these individual gradations did I begin to recognize how they worked together to create the landscape. The colors gradually became something recognizable, revealing distant mountains, undulating terrain, and shifting relationships between light and shadow. It was not quite the sensation of discovering something hidden. Rather, it was the pleasure of finding that something I already considered beautiful possessed another dimension of beauty I had not initially recognized.

I find something philosophically significant in that sequence. The painting did not become beautiful when I recognized the valley. It was beautiful to me before I understood what I was seeing. Recognition enriched the experience, but it was not a condition of my appreciation. I found beauty in the encounter itself.

We often hear that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is an expression so familiar that we seldom pause to consider its implications. We use it to explain differences in taste, acknowledging that one person may admire what another finds unremarkable. Yet beneath that familiar observation lies a more interesting philosophical question. If beauty depends upon the beholder, what determines how the beholder sees? Are our aesthetic preferences simply personal inclinations, or are they shaped by the experiences that have brought us to a particular moment?

David Hume explored this problem in his 1757 essay "Of the Standard of Taste." For Hume, beauty is not a quality existing independently within objects but arises through the sentiments of those who contemplate them. We might agree about a painting's dimensions, colors, and composition without agreeing that it is beautiful. Aesthetic judgment involves something more personal than the recognition of observable characteristics.

I appreciate this understanding because it frees me from feeling obligated to justify every encounter with beauty. Someone else might consider Stenn's colors excessively saturated or her landscape too abstract. They might prefer a more naturalistic representation or find little emotional significance in the composition. Their response would not invalidate mine, just as my appreciation would not compel them to reconsider theirs.

But Hume's argument does not end with the recognition that beauty is subjective. He also believed that taste could be cultivated through practice, comparison, and sustained attention. Our capacity to appreciate artistic qualities develops through experience. The more carefully we encounter art, the more sensitive we may become to distinctions and relationships that previously escaped our attention. Beauty remains personal, but the person experiencing it is capable of change.

I find this particularly meaningful when I consider my longstanding affection for Mark Rothko.

Rothko is my favorite artist. His great fields of color speak to me on several levels, and encountering one of his paintings in person is always a special experience. There is something about standing before a Rothko that cannot be adequately communicated through a photograph or digital reproduction. The scale of the canvas, the subtle variations within its fields, the softness of its boundaries, and the physical relationship between the painting and my own body contribute to an experience that extends beyond simply recognizing the composition.

His paintings invite me to linger. The longer I look, the less the colors seem like separate elements arranged upon a surface. They become atmospheres, presences, and emotional possibilities. A dark field may suggest immeasurable depth, while a brighter passage seems to radiate beyond its boundaries. Colors that initially appear uniform reveal variations in tone, density, and luminosity. Their relationships can produce feelings of tranquility, melancholy, tension, or something for which I have no adequate language.

I have always appreciated that Rothko's paintings resist being reduced to exercises in color theory. For Rothko, painting was concerned with fundamental human emotions, including tragedy and ecstasy. His colors were not merely formal arrangements but vehicles for expressing something about the human condition. That understanding resonates with my own experience. I do not simply see his paintings. I feel them. Their emotional significance does not depend upon recognizable figures or narratives, nor does it require that I articulate precisely what I am feeling.

Over time, these encounters have become part of my aesthetic sensibility. I suspect that my affection for Rothko has influenced the way I approach other paintings, including Odell Valley. Having learned to appreciate color as something expressive in itself, I was already receptive to Stenn's gradations before I recognized their representational purpose.

This does not mean that Stenn's painting is simply another version of Rothko's approach. Her landscape retains a recognizable geography, using successive bands of color to suggest distance, elevation, and the contours of the land. Rothko's nonrepresentational compositions operate differently, allowing color relationships to carry emotional significance without reference to a particular place. Yet both artists invite me to consider color as something more than a descriptive quality. In each, the relationships among colors become part of the experience rather than merely a means of representing something else.

Perhaps my experience with Rothko has taught me to notice those relationships. Or perhaps it has simply made me more willing to remain with them, to appreciate color before asking what it represents. Either way, I recognize that I did not encounter Stenn's painting with entirely fresh eyes. I brought with me a history of looking.

There is, however, a danger in taking this argument too far. If I begin evaluating every encounter with art according to how it develops my aesthetic sensibility, I risk turning beauty into another instrument of personal improvement. The painting becomes valuable because it teaches me something, expands my perspective, or makes me a more sophisticated observer. The experience itself becomes secondary to whatever benefit I expect to receive from it.

Immanuel Kant offers an important corrective in his Critique of Judgment (1790). His concept of disinterested pleasure describes a form of aesthetic appreciation that does not depend upon possessing an object, satisfying a practical desire, or establishing its usefulness. We can recognize beauty without needing it to accomplish anything beyond the pleasure of contemplation.

I find this distinction especially compelling. When I stand before a Rothko, I am not searching for information I can use later. When I admire the colors of Odell Valley, I am not trying to solve a problem or develop a more sophisticated theory of painting. I am looking because looking gives me pleasure. I am appreciating something because I find it beautiful.

The experience justifies itself.

There is something almost countercultural about accepting that simplicity. So much of ordinary life is organized around productivity, achievement, and measurable outcomes. We are encouraged to justify our activities according to what they accomplish, as though an experience without a practical benefit is somehow incomplete. Even leisure can become something to optimize.

Art offers another possibility. It allows us to experience something without demanding that the encounter produce a measurable result. A painting need not become a lesson, and beauty need not become a resource. I can surrender my attention to a work of art and recognize that the experience is worthwhile simply because it is happening.

Yet there is a fascinating paradox here. Although art does not need to change us to possess value, our willingness to encounter it without demanding anything in return may create the conditions through which change becomes possible.

John Dewey's Art as Experience (1934) provides a particularly useful way of understanding this relationship. For Dewey, aesthetic experience is not merely the passive reception of sensations or the intellectual recognition of artistic qualities. It emerges through an active relationship between the individual and the environment, in which perception, emotion, and understanding become integrated into a meaningful whole.

Dewey understood experience as something that develops rather than simply happens. Our encounters with the world are shaped by what we bring to them, but they also become part of the history through which subsequent encounters acquire meaning. An experience may have its own immediate fulfillment while also influencing our capacities for future experience.

This distinction helps me understand how art can change us without needing transformation to become its purpose.

In psychology, perceptual learning describes the process through which experience refines our ability to recognize distinctions and patterns. An experienced musician may hear relationships within a composition that escape an unfamiliar listener. A practiced observer of nature may notice subtle variations in light or movement that others overlook. The world itself has not necessarily changed, but the observer has developed a greater sensitivity to its qualities.

Something similar may occur through repeated encounters with art. The more time I spend appreciating paintings, the more possibilities for appreciation become available to me. This does not mean that I necessarily develop better taste than someone else. Rather, my own experience becomes richer and more differentiated. What once appeared simple may reveal complexity, while something previously unfamiliar may become a source of unexpected pleasure.

I find this possibility especially meaningful because the changes are not always dramatic or consciously recognized. I cannot identify every painting that has influenced my aesthetic sensibilities, nor can I measure the effect of every museum visit. Some encounters have undoubtedly mattered more than others. Some remain vivid in my memory, while others have faded almost entirely. Yet I suspect that even experiences I no longer remember may have contributed to the ways I now perceive the world.

This understanding also complicates the familiar assertion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We often speak of the beholder as though the person doing the looking possesses a fixed collection of preferences. One individual enjoys abstract painting, another prefers landscapes, and still another finds beauty in sculpture or photography. Our tastes become categories through which we describe ourselves.

But I have never experienced my appreciation of art as something quite so settled. My preferences have developed alongside my experiences. Works that once seemed inaccessible have become meaningful, while familiar forms have revealed unexpected dimensions. My affection for Rothko does not limit me to appreciating paintings that resemble his. Instead, it may have expanded my willingness to encounter other works on their own terms.

There is something hopeful about recognizing that our capacity for beauty remains open to development. We need not be confined to what we already understand or appreciate. We can continue learning to see, becoming more attentive to relationships, more receptive to unfamiliar expressions, and more comfortable with experiences whose significance cannot immediately be explained.

This does not mean that every encounter with art produces a transformation. Sometimes we look at a painting, find it beautiful, and move on. Its value may reside entirely within that brief experience. I would not want to diminish such moments by insisting that they must contribute to some larger narrative of personal growth. Beauty does not owe us anything, least of all an explanation of how it has improved our lives.

Still, I cannot entirely separate those moments from the person I have become.

Returning to Odell Valley, I find myself drawn once again to its colors. The blues stretch across the sky, the gray mountains settle into the distance, and the greens, yellows, oranges, and reds unfold across the valley floor. The landscape remains an arrangement of colors, just as those colors remain the elements of a landscape. I can appreciate each without diminishing the other.

I think about the pleasure of standing before a Rothko, the satisfaction of discovering beauty in an unfamiliar painting, and the many encounters that have shaped my relationship with art. None of them needs to be justified by what I learned or how I changed. Their beauty was sufficient in the moments when I experienced them.

I do not know how this particular painting will influence the way I encounter another work tomorrow. I do not need to know. The pleasure of looking was enough.

But I like the thought that somewhere within the experience, perhaps so quietly that I cannot identify the moment, my capacity to appreciate beauty has grown.

The painting has remained the same. The beholder continues to become.