Art’s Nature
Holonic Fusion - Gordon Wood
Nature plays a central role in both Gordon Wood‘s art and in his practice as an artist. Within his work are themes we see in the environment. Dendritic patterns and geologic formations play off each other in balanced organization, yet seemingly border on cacophony. Humanity, as part of nature, is integrated into the scene through forms such as finger and footprints, illuminating our influence as a force in nature. Gordon Wood is the current featured artist over at Integral Life, and as with all of IL’s content I recommend getting over there and checking it out. Michael Schwartz has a good write-up on Wood’s expression of artistic truth in addressing Nature & Culture. I want to share some of the images here because I think they resonate with my blog’s themes and other material I post.
Artist’s Statement:
Nature—nonlinear, complex and dynamic—is the phenomenal, cognitive, intuitive, and reciprocal ingredient for me as an artist. Essentially this is the Generative Order, from which I become humble when I try to understand, even a small corner of a web of interconnected, symbiotic elements and relationships, each of which is inter- or intra-dependent on a majority of others in the biosphere and cosmos. In my art, I work with the elements of the natural system and rearrange them. I try not to do any harm to the source, while I hope that the objects I create let us see the human-nature experience in a compact and expansive form. Nature is the symbiosis of the flux of chaos, mystery and organization. Our rational experience of nature is the challenging element. We are the wild cards in the natural deck, put here to test nature’s resiliency. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can impose order on a system that nature already has functioning in a flowing existence. Through my art I try to bring myself closer to the source, to make my- self see the cosmos as it is, and to celebrate the energy and mystery in sensuous detail. By doing so, I hope my audience will see it – self in a new, more connected way. Human art gives us glimpses of the truth that art is nature.
Topography of the Soul - Gordon Wood
Birth of Awe - Gordon Wood
Confluence of Self and Other - Gordon Wood
Water and Mind Am I - Gordon Wood
Cosmic Dust - Gordon Wood
Encounters - Gordon Wood
See the full gallery at Integral Life
