The Nature Of Things: An exploration of beauty, utopia and decadence. Yvonne Hindle & Henry Rogers.
Here is another book I have been reading which I found some interesting quotes I feel are relevant to my work.
“metaphors of natural growth, of roots, burrowing deep and burgeoning shoots reaching for the sun made us think not only of representations (of the natural world) but also of the processed of artistic production, of how art “becomes”, of how art takes its place…deliberate acts and random movements towards the blossoms and blooms of summer, moments of intoxication and pleasure, realisation and embodiment“. (pge 5-6).
This quote encouraged me to think of my practice and the process I follow. I questioned how my work is influence by the natural weather, I realised I only create outdoor installations when the weather is sunny. The sun naturally increases the beauty of nature, making colours, forms and materials much more pleasing to the eye. Perhaps this is what I am drawn to, the beauty is my escape. I also thought about my creative process and the way I move, are my behaviours a natural response to the setting or do I pre plan? I tend to go to a setting with materials I have already chosen, however my response to that setting is not deliberate, I respond to the elements of nature naturally.
(pge 16): European philosophical aesthetics, dating back to Hegel, represented nature in virtue of its mindlessness, as boringly prosaic and unworthy of aesthetic consideration. Hegel: “the beauty of nature reveals itself as but a reflection of the beauty which belongs to the mind, as an imperfect, incomplete mode of being, as a mode whose really substantial element is contained in the mind itself”.
(page 17): the kernel idea in creativity is that of a making of something that was not there before. nature’s “works” (hives, nests, webs) have always been distinguished by those of art by reason of the absence on the part of their makers of any conscious intention to produce them. This quote encouraged me to think about the reason for my creations, the pattern making I do appears to be trying to fill a void, a void which I feel is being created as we slowly lose the natural word to urbanisation. The void of relationships. The void of understanding.
