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            If a work of art is based on nature, let’s use a painting as an example since this is easiest to imagine, does the impact of the painting come from the subject or the artist’s treatment of the subject? Nature can be awe inspiring, overpowering, or possibly deadly and devastating. Most people respond positively to scenic views, colorful sunsets, or a clear sky graced with a saturated rainbow. Good color photography could adequately capture any of these settings and provide the viewer with a satisfying aesthetic experience. The experience would be different from the natural one, but that would be expected and may prompt the viewer to mentally compare past experience with the represented one. A painter could do equally as well as the photographer at capturing the natural scene and may have several advantages.

            One advantage would be point of view. The artist could create an imaginary view of a scene from an extreme perspective not allowed to the photographer. This could add dramatic effect to the image. Additionally, the painter could enhance the color scheme (although an adept digital photographer could photo-shop the image as well). How the painter chose to manipulate the physical qualities of the paint might be another advantage over the photograph, but now a more extreme shift away from the natural image is beginning to occur. Artistry in the rendering may actually supersede the natural image as in the case of many Impressionist or Post-Impressionist landscapes. Compare these, for example, with landscapes from the Hudson River school of painters. In the former one becomes very conscious of the paint surface, and in the latter not so much unless the painting is observed very closely. Even so, the Hudson River painters did not typically paint in the loose manner of the Impressionists or the methodical style of a painter like Cézanne.

            There are thousands of years of art based on nature and natural imagery. This obviously is a very important subject for human expression. Perhaps this is because we are products of nature ourselves in spite of our efforts to control her and to insulate ourselves from her vagaries. People might even be considered a particular bloom of the Earth: plants flower and the Earth peoples. If plants could think and express themselves, they might make some form of art beyond their own magnificent selves, and this art would likely be nature based just as is our own.

            Even when we begin to think abstractly, we often look to nature for ways to express visually. There is such a wealth of intricate designs in nature from microcosm to macrocosm that sometimes abstract art echoes natural forms without the artist being conscious of that fact. Later the connection is made that certain abstract paintings seem related or even derivative of natural forms found in rock formations, plant growth patterns, or other irregular patterns in bark, animal markings, the movement of waves, or the accumulated forms within a pile of leaves. We can also find the most intricate color interactions, harmonies, and modulations in an incredible range of natural subjects.

            Is art about seeing ourselves through the forms of nature? Is it an automatic response to the complexity of sensory input that our bodies process constantly, i.e. art is another way to understand, make sense of, or represent the world to ourselves that adds a subtle twist to the commonplace interpretive process wherein we programmatically translate sensory experience into meaningful perception? We are a curious lot – there is no question about that. We have many centuries of evidence to prove it.

            It may well be that art is natural expression on many levels. We make art based on our observations of and experiences with nature. We make art as naturally as we breathe or eat or reproduce. We make art as a questioning response to the awe-inspiring experience of life. We make art to connect spiritually to the cosmos and to our maker. We make art to mirror the processes of life. We make art to celebrate our connection to the world we inhabit. We make art to explore the possibilities of life and existence. We make art to ponder the unanswerable questions humans have been asking since gaining self-awareness. Perhaps we make art because it is what we are meant to do – we create simply for the sake of creating as naturally as a flower blooms, a bird sings, or a rainbow glows in the sky.