I first read about female and male environmental artists through reading the book Overlay by Lucy Lippard in undergrad at art school recommended by my lecturer Bonita Ely. I tried to have a balanced essay with two female artists and two male artists and then as a footnote my environmental art.
One of the artists in Overlay that peeked, my interest was Ana Mendieta.
“Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) was a Cuban-American artist known for her “earth-body” sculptures and performances bridging the gap between her body, nature, and her lost homeland. Her quotes often reflect themes of spirituality, primal connection, and personal displacement, notably stating: “My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that tie me to the universe”.
I like Ana’s performance works and interventions in nature as I also went on to make performance art in nature but in my case always on the beach and mainly with the ocean behind me.
Andy Goldsworthy is an English artist and by using materials in nature he made stunning installations and then they exist in the gallery in the form of large-scale photographs of them. Some of the best ones were made in the Australian outback. They are also popular in big coffee table art books.
“Andy Goldsworthy has created significant environmental art in Australia, most notably the Strangler Cairn (2011) in Queensland’s Conondale National Park and a 1997 stone cairn on Melbourne’s Herring Island. His work, often site-specific and ephemeral, explores the intersection of nature, decay, and time. “
“Richard Long, a seminal British land artist, creates works focusing on walking, nature, and simple geometric forms like circles and lines. His quotes emphasize the connection between human experience and the natural world, defining his art as a, “simple metaphor of life,” and the “essence of my experience, not a representation of it”.
“I love walking, so I’ve made my work an act of what I love to do”.
Richard Long
I also love walking and I used to walk on the beach two hours a day seven days a week but now swim laps at the pool and walk ten minutes either end of the bus trip.
“I guess I’m an opportunist, really. I go out into the world with an open mind, and I rely to a degree on intuition and chance”.
Richard Long
I love this quote about being an opportunist and the importance of intuition and chance. In my own art particularly my drawings with text I rely on intuition more than rationale thinking.
“I often say that if a work in the landscape takes more than about half an hour to make, there’s probably something wrong with it”.
Richard Long
I agree with Richard that if a work takes longer than thirty minutes then there is probably something wrong with it and my beach performance pieces usually take no longer than twenty minutes.
“Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) was a French-American artist whose raw, emotive quotes explore themes of trauma, memory, motherhood, and art as a form of psychoanalytic restoration. Key themes in her work include childhood drama, the strength of the spider, and the necessity of art for survival, often emphasizing the “repression” of emotion.”
“To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence”.
Louise Bourgeois
I agree about the need for silence as an artist but I don’t use it enough and it’s only while writing that I am silent as when I draw my ten drawings a day project I am usually listening to music.
“I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don’t want to lose it. With the abstract drawings, when I’m feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious.”
I love this quote by Louise Bourgeois and I find my drawings are incredibly cathartic but the text and images are mainly positive and embrace the philosophy of my favourite saints Mary MacKillop and Saint Francis. I like her idea of slipping into the unconscious too as I feel the intuition in my own drawings comes straight out of the unconscious rather than being planned and rational.
During my last residency at the Big Ci in Bilpin in the Blue mountains in 2023 me and two of the other artists from Europe caught the train to Sydney with me to see a Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and it was epic. It was the sculpture carvings and installations that I found most intriguing.
The show was called: Louise Bourgeois Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?
In conclusion when art meets nature, meets psychological space, meets spirituality it is an interesting concoction and this kind of search for redemption and spirituality is contagious and captivating for the artist and audience.