Natural Art

"All art is but imitation of nature." Lucius Annaeus Seneca

sand formations: Andy Goldsworthy

The spontaneous organizations of nature are powerful and emotive, far more emotive to the human soul than the finest products from any culture house.  I believe this.  The true elegance of nature is something I know and observe within my bones, however, I would like to challenge its relationship to art. The above quote, from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, true to a large extent, is also simplified, and I would like to raise two important points which open his perspective.

Firstly we as humans are obsessed with our own humanity (myself included). Blogs and personal pages proliferate on the web, and the personal memior has become a rite of passage. We are the generations of extreme navel gazing, and yet, I do not view this in itself as a bad thing.  Carl Rogers, psychologist, explains this natural drive toward wholeness as an actualizing tendency.  Mevlana Rumi writes, “without your even knowing Allah put this longing in your heart.”  Maude, in the wonderful film Harold and Maude, speaks of a playful yet constant interest in “my species”.  And - the main commandment of the Delphic Oracle stands eternally as “know thyself”.  We have, however, used this interest for centuries to place ourselves at the top eschalon of an otherwise symbiotic earth, and to confine oursevles within ever tightening layers of stratification and hierarchy.  Our collective self knowledge has been turned to baseless purposes which degrade us, and now our earth, and her natural elegant arts, are in peril.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons for artistic presentation and re-presentation to have a place within humanity is to provide a way of looking at, questioning, and relieving tension from social structures which seek to train our longing, our drive toward wholeness, our innate self-interest into conformist images and agendas.  The power of art to question and disrupt authority has been known and used throught our dark ages, (Shakespear was a prime example, the forest theatres of the soviet republic, and the butoh movement of the 1960's-just to mention a few) and it is vital that we contine to utilize performative power towards evolutionary purposes.  At this moment in our human story, to open ourselves beyond elegeant imitation of nature is also to open ourselves beyond imitation of what we have come to call normal, or civilized life.  The arts are fundamentally important to our future, for they open our internal creative pathways, they are our way back to our wilderness.

fragments create a new spiral: Andy Goldsworthy

Secondly, the semantics of imitation vs. working with are vital to the discussion.  If we, as artists, seek only to reflect and to imitate, whether nature or social structures, then we are foregoing our abilities for creation, we are dampening the spirit of sharing which is a spark of life within us. Further, while we learn vital information from imitating nature, such as which plants to eat and how to shelter ourselves in winter, we are also responsible for bringing the human element which is us to natures doorstep in sharing. The responsible artist and the responsible gardener are not so different!  I would call responsible sharing stewardship, and it is a call to stewardship which presses me to write these thoughts today.  

There is no wilderness which living beings have not touched.  For all of our efforts at creating national parks or saving the amazon, we will leave a trace,  we will make an impact.  So let our trace be one of conscious co-creation.  I would one day like to see the slogan, All art is but a service of stewardship to the nature within and around us, painted on a banner, pasted on a bumper sticker, written into the lines of policy makers and funding bodies whom artists (and the public) rely on. 

stick reflections: Andy Goldsworthy

In our times of transition the arts provide a powerful tool for opening us to the true nature of ourselves, the land which nourishes us, and each other. Through questioning, performance, sharing, and honouring, we can create new establishments more in line with the co-creative tendencies now ever emergent.