Beauty is one of the most celebrated words in art and faith conversations, but it may also be one of the most misunderstood. Is beauty simply what pleases the eye, or is it something deeper? 

Can beauty exist alongside suffering, loss, and the grotesque? And what happens when we settle for beauty that comforts us while avoiding the realities that transform us?

What if beauty requires darkness, mystery, and even lament in order to reveal its deepest meaning? In this roundtable discussion, Stephen Roach and guests Corey Frey, Liv Ross, and Scott Aasman wrestle with beauty not as sentimentality or surface appeal, but as a force capable of holding together truth, goodness, suffering, and hope.

KEY TOPICS

• Why beauty can feel inauthentic when it is removed from struggle
• The original meaning of "glamour" as a veil designed to trap and deceive, and why that etymology still matters for artists today
• How the three transcendentals — goodness, truth, and beauty — function like a trinity: remove one and the others collapse into vanity, brutality, or cover-up
• What Edmund Burke and Kant meant by the sublime, and why terror and beauty belong together rather than apart
• The real context behind Dostoevsky's phrase "beauty will save the world," drawn from The Idiot, and why stripping it from that argument changes everything
• Thomas Kinkade's stated goal of painting a world where the Fall never happened, and what his private life and Andy Warhol quote reveal about the cost of bypassing Holy Saturday
• Why form without substance is essentially pornographic, and how true beauty requires the material and the spiritual coming together
• How artistic isolation stunts creative roots the way a tree grown in perfect conditions falls in the first storm and why community, friction, and disagreement strengthen both the artist and the work

About the Guests:

Corey Frey is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and co-founder of The Well Collaborative, a community dedicated to creativity, curiosity, and culture. He lives in Maryland with his wife and continues to explore the intersections of art, faith, and imagination.

Liv Ross is an urban monk, poet, essayist, and Managing Editor of Traces Journal. Writing from the Ozarks, her work explores place, wonder, memory, and spiritual formation. Her first book, The Blackbird Ballad, was published by Solum Literary Press in 2026.

Scott Aasman is an award-winning illustrator, educator, and co-founder of Salt Cellar Arts, an arts-focused community for the spiritually attentive and creatively engaged. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife and two children.

Resources Mentioned

• Beauty Will Save the World by Brian Zahnd
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World by James Hillman
•  Works by Flannery O'Connor
•  Works by Cormac McCarthy
•  Paintings of Thomas Kinkade
•  Landscapes of J. M. W. Turner

Connect with Our Guests

Corey Frey
coreysfrey.com

Liv Ross
The Abbey of Curiosity Substack
The Blackbird Ballad

Scott Aasman
Instagram – San Illustration

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