References
This reference is a documentary introducing Andy Goldsworthy’s natural sculpture works, and I am particularly fond of his use of natural materials for artistic creation. These fleeting works come to life through nature and vanish in the natural cycle. Despite their brief existence, they beautifully capture the essential stages of life—growth, stillness and decay. This also reflects the similarity between his sculptures and the natural life cycle.
Andy Goldsworthy, Sycamore leaves edging the roots of a sycamore tree, 2013.
This is Tim Knowles’s tree paintings. Similar to Andy, he involves nature in his creative process, abandoning conscious intervention. He hands over the brush and canvas to the trees, allowing them to paint under the influence of the wind. In this way, he witnesses the chance and randomness inherent in the natural world.
Olga has been gathering lots of leaves and flowers in the forest and creating adorable plant specimen journals through a combination of hand-drawing and text.
Line of enquiry 2.0
Now returning to my work, these are some key words I extracted from last week’s feedback, such as “use nature to advance my enquiry”, “nature should be part of my creative medium”, and “play around with materials”. So I responded to these in the iterations for this week. Based on reflection, my more specific line of enquiry is:
How can the narrative of nature painting be used to interpret the interconnections between nature and humans in a way that evokes empathy for nature?
Iterations
I continue to iterate on this image from last week. This time I aim to convey air pollution in the atmosphere. Initially, I used oil pastels for colouring and burned the sky with a candle flame to represent smog. However, I felt the image was overly saturated and lacked the focus I intended because I want to preserve more of the randomness in the composition.
So I tried another method of creating space in the painting, and I found that this approach makes more sense.
This is called “End of the world.” I used plastic for pasting along the coastline to express the piled-up plastic pollution washed ashore by the sea.
This painting is called “Wilted tree, spring reborn,” which is a Chinese idiom meaning to regain new life in adversity. In the composition, I used tree branch to symbolize adversity, while the image of a dove represents new opportunities.
This is called “Rainy day.” I want to convey a romantic and melancholic emotion, where wilting flowers create beauty in the fleeting moments of life.
Regarding the next steps in my work, I envision using exclusively natural elements in my compositions, making nature the true medium of creation. For instance, extracting pigments directly from nature rather than using chemical pigment. Tree bark, fruits, and leaves from plants may contain natural dyes, while different minerals in the soil could offer a variety of colours.
22.01 Feedback
We held a silent presentation where everyone just showed their work without further explanation, then we started 1:1 tutorial. Here are some feedback on my work.
I could be more adventurous in my work and use only natural materials to create images.
Do think about how to use materials within the context of natural materials and use them for specific purposes. Create meaningful images with messages as it is made up nature. Let natural materials become the medium to build the image, rather than gluing or collaging on the image. For example, using leaves and petals in a mosaic way…
Find a focus and use natural materials to show (pollution or negative impacts), showing how things change in response to (human influence or under certain conditions).
Grow materials as a way of doing data visualization. Modulate the size of objects is also a form of data processing. Demonstrate natural changes in natural materials over time.
How do natural things grow? How do they change? How can I show their change? How can I illustrate data?
Examples: Oil spillage, air filter…
The interesting thing about this installation is that it change over time. As the banana ripen further, the motto will disappeared and the background become brownish-yellow. The whole bananas gradually decays over 24 days of the exhibition.
Each work begins as a drawing, the outline of the mandala. Then, colored sand is poured from traditional metal funnels called chak-purs. Each monk holds a chak-pur in one hand, while running a metal rod on its grated surface; the vibration causes the sands to flow like liquid. It is almost as if they are truly painting. A sand-painted mandala serves as a spiritual symbol. Shortly after it is made, it’s deconstructed. The destruction serves as a metaphor of the impermanence of life.