Urgent Beauty

Urgent Beauty, by the international novelist and playwright Ana Ingham, is a beautiful novel about the dilemma of love and art. Ben, a brutally charming English painter, is disillusioned by the contemporary world. To escape the constraints of the English society, and paint the best pictures ever created, he lives in a remote house on the legendary coast of Cornwall. He entertains scores of attractive women who are charmed by his rich humor, his magnificent ability to spin stories into vivid realities, and his sensual nature that makes him not only a wonderful lover but a wonderful cook. Although Ben welcomes all of life's sensuous pleasures, he regularly falls into the grip of despair because he cannot truly love because he perceives women only visually and because he cannot paint the most beautiful pictures ever painted. When Ben decides to reside in Worpswede, an artist colony in Germany, he charms the entire village, but despair seizes him again and again because he feels far away from the pinnacle of art and all pleasures seem futile to him. Only when he meets Elsa, a French poet of Spanish origin, free-spirited and witty like himself, he experiences the true connection. They embark upon a relationship which is deep, romantic, and turbulent. Ben paints picture after picture of Elsa, to connect to her, to himself and grasp the essence of love and art But what is the driving force of love and art? Satisfaction or pain? Harmony or conflict? Ana Ingham paints a perfect picture of an artist's dilemma. Her words weave a beautiful tale of how love can be a double-edged sword by which one can be protected or deeply wounded.