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Nature Describing Nature

The essay ‘Nature Describing Nature’ in the book ‘Under the Greenwood’, serves as the catalogue publication for a 2-part exhibition at the St Barbe Museum, Lymington, co-curated with Southampton Art Gallery (July–November 2013). These linked exhibitions consider how trees have featured in British artists' work and inspiration over the last 200 years. I am one of 4 contributors of texts to the publication. My intention was to write an overview of contemporary practice, with particular reference to some of the 33 artists who feature in the 2nd exhibition, which only includes contemporary work. The research considers the motivations of contemporary artists who use the tree as a motif, examining themes such as individual and national identity, memory, autobiography, Arcadian, Utopian ideals, environmental change, and the meaning of landscape at a time in which much of our knowledge or interaction with the natural world is mediated through technology. I examine the ways in which artists utilise both traditional and digital practices in their work, and how they form commentaries on our present-day engagement and interpretations of landscape and nature through technology. My research draws on artists’ statements written specifically for the publication, along with images of the selected works, and on email correspondence with selected artists. It further draws on texts about landscape and modernity, literary Romanticism, Surrealism, mysticism/folklore, and the social meanings of landscape. The research considers traditions of practice, including the plein-air tradition and studio practice. In contextualising contemporary works I describe the ways in which past artists have painted trees from a range of motivational standpoints, including: Hobbema, Constable, Cézanne and Böcklin.