Representing Art in Nature

Claude Monet. Katsushika Hokusai. John James Audubon. Georgia O’Keeffe. Andy Goldsworthy. The record of fine artists using nature for their closest studies of the world encompasses all time and appears in all cultures.

Artists challenge themselves to accurately represent what nature creates, and they also use nature studies to explore humanity’s connection to and responsibility for the natural world.

It’s not easy. Long before an artist takes a brush to canvas or a saw to metal, accurately representing the intricacies found in nature is about being able to see the detail. Try this yourself. Pick any object close at hand and make note of two things you observe about it. Is it your phone? Did you observe the color, and perhaps the shape? Two things are roughly what the average person sees in anything they stop to observe. And for every thing you observe, there are probably 30 more things that you didn’t even register visually the last time you moved from room to room.

Okay, let’s look at that object again. Try to observe three more things. Now three more. Three more? In fact, how many visual findings can you make about the thing you are observing? There’s a lot more there than you realized at first, right?

That’s what an artist representing nature does. They must observe deeply, to the most minute detail, in order to reflect the natural object in their medium of choice. Every little line on a leaf, every bead of light coming through a glade of trees, the different levels of gray and black in a shadow, varying lengths of antennae, or hairs along the surface of a stem . . . these are the observations that must happen before nature can be accurately reflected in art.

Jim Cleland’s chosen art form is jewelry, and he uses it to create tiny sculptures. Like this little leaf beetle, the ladybug-like eumolpinae. He starts by studying his objects, using any references he can find that will allow him to see the level of detail necessary to recreate them. Then, he draws, hammers, saws, pierces, polishes, and sets – using the entire master jeweler skillset. When you’re here in the shop, you can tell when another insect, or frog, or fish has grabbed Jim’s imagination. He becomes fixated on his work; first on seeing the object’s full, exquisite detail, and then on recreating it in as much detail as possible, including engineering the pieces so they move in realistic ways.

So this little beetle is his latest obsession, and now it’s ours! We just thought you might enjoy having this peek into the studio, and into the work behind so many of the exquisite pieces in our cases.