Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer
We were house sitting over the weekend and I was fascinated by the higgledy piggeldy melange of pictures that hung on the walls. A simple line drawing of a whooper swan in full flight. A copy of Constable’s hay wain showing a bulbous steel grey sky, the figures of a man and his horse tiny against the immensity of their surroundings. Next were scientific details of rare birds seen by chance, each feather painted immaculately, with notes on song and habit in scrawled hand alongside. What I found interesting about these paintings was that each one was entirely different in style yet they were also the same. Every piece of art was a depiction of nature.
From man’s earliest days and his first drawings on the walls of caves, nature has been at the heart of so much of our art. At risk of sounding affected (I really don’t mean to but I think their might be truth in this) isn’t nature art in itself? My morning’s walk would say that it is.
The July summer air has cooled overnight and pricks your bare arms just enough to give you goose bumps. The grass is laden with dew the colour of moonlight; the last remnants of a clear skied night. Three red deer scramble to their feet as we walk past. Their heads are heavy with velvet covered antlers, carved coral-like and covered in silver-grey moss.
Later I will see the barn owl, the colour of fresh cream. He hangs silently on the tree line or motionless on the gate post, a dangling catch clutched between his talons. In the evenings we hear him screeching and I imagine him flying smoothly between the houses, ghoulish beneath a darkening sky.
And what about the cobweb that Robin and I sat admiring? Shining tensile strength woven intricately into loops and lace hanging the last of the mornings mist upon it’s silk.
Nature is maths and science too. Studying the number of petals of a flower or the spirals in a pinecone gave rise to Fibonacci’s mathematical theory. The take off flight of bats, the spirals in a snail’s shell gave us the Golden Mean, another famous number. And think how many medicines we have thanks to plants and trees. In fact without nature, the first pigments in early paints wouldn’t have even been available to us.
So without nature (and we’re losing it fast) what would we have to copy, study, be amazed by, try to emulate in art and science? To try and live without nature would be putting the cart before the horse. In fact, I think it might be impossible.
What can you do to help halt the loss of biodiversity? Go to www.rspb.org.uk/steppingup to find out.
Article in Eastern Daily Press on Saturday 9th July 2011.
Photo Credit: Close-up detail of common buzzard (Buteo buteo) feather. Mark Hamblin (rspb-images.com)