Slow Looking: The Art of Nature

Slow Looking: The Art of Nature is a unique celebration of the relationship between art and nature across millennia. Eschewing a linear narrative of art, this inspirational collection of global artworks makes connections between the nature that surrounds us and the vision of a dazzlingly wide range of artists. Readers will encounter motifs, colours and subjects that have mesmerized artists – and viewers – throughout history, and in the process, develop their own understanding of how they see the natural world. Olivia Meehan has mixed paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles and decorative arts from across the entire period of human creation and territory in thought-provoking juxtapositions. On every page, she invites us to find something new in a familiar landscape and to experiment in the observation of nature’s wonders.

Exploring the various intersections between artistic techniques and thematic elements, across land, sea and sky, she reveals the deep-rooted connections between humans beings and our natural world: the forms and colours of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of a shell echo a carved fossil from 500,000–300,000 BCE; Van Gogh’s olive trees (1889) are juxtaposed with Ancient Egyptian carved limestone dated between 1353–1323 BCE; and while waterlilies captivated Claude Monet, their allure also travelled as far as Japan to Kawase Hasui (1929).

Following nature’s patterns, this guided observation of nature offers a novel way of contemplating the world.