Safran de Niverville 1 Barbara Safran de Niverville Professor Stuart Steck Faculty Advisor 15 May 2012 What is nature to me?

Nature and Abstraction in My Work Responding to the question, What is nature to me? is central to my current artistic practice. In my work, I am developing forms, patterns and textures based on observations of what is commonly known as nature; that which is not directly produced by humans, and which acts independently of humanity.1 (Soper 15) The concept of nature itself has acquired enormous complexity, both historically and more recently, with the development of postmodernist thought and the emergence of public concerns for the ecology. (Soper 1-10) A multitude of value positions exist, which influence discussions and debates involving nature. (Schwartz 1-13) Even defining the term nature becomes problematic. Kate Soper in her book, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the non-Human, writes: Nature, as Raymond Williams has remarked, is one of the most complex words in the language.2 Yet, as with many other problematic terms, its

I use this definition for expediency in this essay, although some authors argue that human

interventions have modified our environment so much that it may be unrealistic to make such a distinction. See environment def. 2a, Merriam-Webster 418. Soper references Raymond Williams from Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, 1980. 68.
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Safran de Niverville 2 complexity is concealed by the ease and regularity with which we put it to use in a variety of contexts. It is at once both very familiar and extremely elusive. . . To attempt to disentangle these various threads of discourse is to realize what a vast range of possible topics a work such as this one might be addressing. (1-2) In her book Mother/ Nature, Catherine Roach adds to the discussion of the term in its commonest sense: Traditional Western definitions of nature as that which is not human or produced by humans and of culture as that which is human or produced by humans are also problematic if they maintain a separation that violates the ecological lessons of interdependence. (Roach 13) It can also be argued that nature, to the majority of us, becomes a cultural construct through which we interpret our interactions with the environment.3 Roach asks, Can anyone say anything about the nature of being human in nature as a cross-cultural, panhistoric phenomenon?4 (14) My own artistic exploration, in a sense, becomes the nature of being this human in nature, with my personal history as a backdrop. I am certain that I brought an idealized view of nature with me as an urban teenager when I moved with my family from suburban New York City to rural Canada. Our 150 year-old farmhouse was located two miles from our nearest neighbors back there in the woods, as the local farmers would say. We discovered nearby forests, fields, marshes and wildlife. The huge expanse of the sky seemed liberating. The constant winds were refreshing. The green of the

See Schwarz and Thompson, Chapter 1, for a discussion of the four myths of nature as

identified by ecologists and mapped onto the typology of social relationships.

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Roach examines Mother Nature in pop culture imagery in order to garner insights into

Western cultures ambivalent attitudes towards nature.

Safran de Niverville 3 rippling salt marshes was pastoral. I felt fully engaged while sketching amidst spiny wild flowers as cows peered over my shoulder. It is worth mentioning, however, that my present perspective on nature has deepened since that time. These same forests are not wilderness; they are fallow fields, overgrown during the past century with spruce, tamarack and birch trees. The local river is no longer pure; its muddy water carries pollutants from villages upstream in its currents. The clouds overhead appear white, but they are not clean; they bring acid rain from the American Midwest on occasion. Cognizance of humanitys interventions to the environment only increases my admiration for the vigor and resistance of its natural forces. My observation of nature examines its dynamic mobility, its resurgence in the face of obstacles, the shifting and repositioning of its components over time. This energy animates my exploration of natural structures and their intricate and seemingly random movements. I feel the excitement of discovery when I find the lacey pattern of lichens on a rock or a tree trunk, or the interwoven network of cracks in river ice. The rush of the Tidal Bore upstream undulates in new ways with every tide. My interest in the distinctive in nature guides me as I interpret its peculiar and essential qualities. Kate Soper comments, Representations of nature, and the concepts we bring to it, can have very definite political effects, many of them having direct bearing on the cause of ecological conservation itself. (9) This bears further reflection, as my current carved and painted reliefs do not seem political, militant, or reformative. Instead, they focus on a certain mindfulness of the natural environment through their details. I anticipate that viewers of my work will be motivated to take more notice of trees, rivers, and skies as well as the microcosms of their surroundings. I view this objective as a continuum while my artistic practice evolves and changes. With this in mind, I aim to develop a visual tension between suggestion and depiction, between realism

Safran de Niverville 4 and abstraction, so that the viewer will be engaged with the artwork as long as possible. An illustrative and detailed landscape scene is assimilated mentally within seconds and remains tied to its specific locality. While residents of the particular area portrayed may delight in seeing familiar vistas, this aspect of the work limits its audience. After producing dozens of paintings in this genre, I now prefer to work with more suggestion and with fewer direct references, creating the potential for richer layers of meaning. I find the paintings of Tomma Abts intriguing in the subtlety of their abstract shapes and their muted color palettes. Abts denies any references to exterior objects as sources for her work. She says that (each work is) An image of the process of making it . . . of thinking. (Nickas 230234) Tony Godfrey disagrees in Painting Today: Modernist abstraction had begun by abstracting from nature, and . . . Tomma Abts, in that apparently most old-fashioned way. . . continues to abstract from nature, taking what seems like traditional abstract formats and invigorating them by intense colour relationships, complex textural surfaces and sheer quirkiness. . .5 (161) Perhaps this seeming identification with organic forms and their quirkiness is what attracts me to Abts work. She builds up shallow reliefs on her canvases, adding contrast to the surface shapes of her compositions. Low relief is a technique I am currently working with on plywood panels, although it takes a different form as a subtractive, textural element. I believe the nuances of color in Abts work are enhanced by her use of oil paint over acrylics. In my own work, the addition of oil glazes over acrylics adds a subtlety and a mellow appearance to a project, which is difficult to attain with acrylics alone.
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Godfrey also includes artists Thomas Scheibitz and Thomas Nozkowski in this discussion.

Safran de Niverville 5 The integration of realism and abstraction in Jacob Feiges paintings is also of interest to me. Feige explains, I make landscape paintings that are settings for abstract events, and abstract paintings in a painted landscape. . .where what we do and what we dont recognize intermingle. . . (Nickas 35) Feiges paintings draw the viewer into their fantastic realms, their ambiguity enhancing the sense of otherworldliness. While this effect is not my intent in my own work, Feiges use of splicing abstract elements into his landscapes is a device I am exploring in the development of my own digital imagery, which juxtaposes geometric forms with photographic organic elements. My work has been identified in the past with the romanticization6 of nature, however, I view this as a challenge to be analyzed and surpassed. A dream of perfection in nature, as expressed in a painting, may prompt feelings of pleasure and reassurance in viewers, but it is doubtful that it encourages a greater sensitivity to ones actual surroundings. Chaia Heller states that, the romantic expresses his love through perfect thoughts rather than through authentic knowledge or action.7 The viewer may experience these perfect thoughts while contemplating a romantic work of art, but with reference to my past work, this effect has rarely led to much beyond a few comments on the loveliness of the images.8 It is a subtle transcendence that I am seeking, which goes beyond the pastoral ideal of a mythic Arcadia to the here and now of nature as a vigorous and dynamic complexity. It is not a question of the simplistic good or bad view of nature, its purity or its pollution, its heroic virtue
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See romantic def. 4a. and romanticize Merriam-Webster 1081. See Roach p. 69 or Heller in Works Cited list. Visitors to my exhibitions of landscapes in the past have expressed these views. Their

comments prompted me to move away from idyllic vistas in my work.

Safran de Niverville 6 or our emotional excesses in considering it, but the fascination with natures external systems. Repetition and transformation occur as these processes continue over time, leading me to a deeper basis for my artistic practice. Robert Smithson has written: I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. . . .I am talking about a dialectic of nature that interacts with the physical contradictions inherent in natural forces as they are nature as both sunny and stormy. Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal. Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development. Nature is never finished. . . . (971) The challenge for me as an artist lies in creating an individual visual vocabulary for the dynamism of nature, which will also be of interest to a greater audience.

Safran de Niverville 7 WORKS CITED Godfrey, Tony. Painting Today. London, UK: Phaidon Press Inc., 2009. Print. Heller, Chaia. For the Love of Nature: Ecology and the Cult of the Romantic. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Ed. Greta Gaard. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. 219. Web. 4 May 2012. <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99286591> Cited in Roach p. 69. Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2007. Print. Nickas, Bob. Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting. London,UK: Phaidon Press Inc., 2009. Print. Roach, Catherine. Mother / Nature: Popular Culture and Environmental Ethics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univerity Press, 2003. Print. Schwarz, Michiel and Michael Thompson. Divided We Stand: Redefining Politics, Technology and Social Choice. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. Print. Smithson, Robert. Cultural Confinement. Art in Theory 1900 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 970 71. Print. Soper, Kate. What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the non-Human. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1995. Print.