...the meaning of life and art...

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."  
Marc Chagall

Luther's dictum on the poor and beauty

“The poor need beauty as much as bread because they live in the midst of ugliness.”

N.T. Wright on art, excerpt from Surprised by Hope

"To make sense of and celebrate a beautiful world through the production of artifacts that are themselves beautiful is part of the call to be stewards of creation, as was Adam's naming of the animals. Genuine art is thus itself a response to the beauty of creation, which itself is a pointer to the beauty of God."

Excerpt from Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright, a New Testament scholar and the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England