You may remember I'm a big fan of two writers: Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard. In their writings, they walk the reader through the natural landscape, taking him by the arm and pointing out Nature's wonders. But they aren't just “nature writers.” They go beyond detailing the nesting habits of groundhogs or the intricacy of a wasp's nest. They elevate the reader's experience, transcending the quotidian essays of most nature writers by rising into the realm of the philosophical and spiritual.
You may also remember that I like books about art and artists. Recently, a new book caught my attention: Painting the Woods: Nature, Memory, and Metaphor by Deborah Paris. I forget how I came across it, but when I learned it is by an artist I'd met years ago at a plein air painting event in New Mexico, my curiosity grew. I ordered it without really delving into what the book is about.
When I cracked it open, it hooked me immediately. It's not another “how-to-paint” book. Nor is it a “how-to-see” book, another type one commonly runs into. Instead, it's a “how-to-think-about-what-we-do-as-artists” book. It takes the reader into the artist's mind where it explores the whys and hows of the creative process. Much of this exploration is laid out by the author as a narrative, taking place in an old-growth forest in rural Texas. There she considers the things she wants to paint, and while gathering reference materials for an ultimate return to the studio, mediates on how artists reckon with the natural world to refine an artistic vision.
For example, on memory:
Without sustained observation there is no memory—it's just that simple. When I allow my interest and response to visual impressions to guide my observations, rather than a focus driven by pictorial concerns, it is much easier to store those memories and use them later. … I have come to rely almost completely on memory for motif ideas and color, needing field reference only for specifics of form.
Thoreau and Dillard are masters at working in the spiritual and philosophical as they catalog their observations of nature. Paris, too, scatters her thoughts generously, like an oak dropping acorns, as she explores her forest.
Painting the Woods: Nature, Memory, and Metaphor by Deborah Paris. 2020, Texas A&M University Press. Available at Amazon.
