Nature and the Divine

Painting landscape have been an approach that I've taken for quite some time, manipulating them into abstracted forms standing by the melding of colours. Mostly based on an the amalgamation of my own archive of landscape pictures as well as the imaginarium, I try and create lines that would have been naturally created with a slow push here and slight tuck there.

Nature has always been an important subject within the arts, whether one is a creator of landscapes or not. The constant backdrop of the day to day have mostly been if not predominantly overrun by the vast natural world or the lack of it. Throughout the history of painting, nature have always been a part of most if not all important art movements; the ancient arts of hieroglyphs and cave arts as well as alchemical allegories to the middle ages. With the renaissance we are seeing depiction of realistic attempt of nature (amongst other subject matter) until it proved to be overrated and people started abstracting realities with impressionisms and then eventually, straight down to it, abstract art. As interesting as it may, looking at the linear timeline as art evolve alongside the intellectualism of our human and cultural understandings, they are constantly reacting to one another. Art has become a way to encapsulate our understanding of reality so much that at this moment in history, in a world where political discourse is at its highest state of subject matter and freedom with the help of instant access with the internet, political art has a way to move our emotions and way of thinking more than any other medium (portrait, minimalism, brutalism, abstract, etc.) could.

But I digress.

The importance of nature in our lives, whether or not we paint it, is absolute. We need them more than they need us and I have always find that the sense of being obsolete have never been more prevalent when we are in the middle of nature far, far way from everyone and everything else. I do believe this is why that we are able to connect with ourselves more, process experiences and work through them, seek enlightenment if you may so incline, best when we are in nature, within the landscape of wilderness, when we as human civilisation has worked so much in our evolution to control such chaos.

'The Divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds.' Caspar David Friedrich in reference to his painting Swans in the Rushes (1819-20).

It is of no problem to agree that we can connect divinity or enlightenment within the freedom of nature. Most religious arts they would depicts scene of saints or prophets somewhere in nature, or events of catastrophe struck by the gods or goddesses within elemental disasters and even sublime contentment depicted in Monet's garden.

Over several years I have profoundly enjoyed my readings and research into mysticism, old religions, symbolisms and esoteric works. It has grounded my beliefs even further in my love of exploring landscape as a subject matter and that it has only just started for my practice. Since my art hiatus of over three years, it is such a pleasure to feel the excitement and curiosity alighted with each sessions no matter if it's panting on canvas or simple sketches with pencils, to pursuit the wedding of divinity and nature.