Art is fire. Art is water. Art is earth. Here’s a list of 10 amazing nature artists that have immersed their lives in creating art for nature, from nature. Through their work we find new connections to the world outside and new ways of connecting to the nature within.
This list is not a ranking. It is a curation of works of inspiration. We have covered a wide range of nature artists who work with different elements – rocks, ice, sand, sound, forest, flowers, and even light.
10 Nature Artists
Like bees spread pollen from the flowers, we hope you will be captivated by their works and share their art with a wider world. It will go a long way in bringing more people closer to nature. Which in itself is one of the main intentions of these artists for nature. Please feel free to add to the list of nature artists in the comments section below.
Snow
Simon Beck is a British snow artist and a former cartographer. Referred to as the world’s first snow artist, he is primarily known for his landscape drawings and sculptures created from snow and sand.
Tomás Sánchez is a Cuban painter. Best known for his detailed and idealized nature scenes, his work is characterized by its contemporary interpretation of landscape painting.
Kilian Schönberger is a professional photographer & geographer from Germany. He has a form of colour blindness which he uses as a strength – given the difficulty of distinguishing certain tones, he concentrates on pattern and structure.
Jonna Jinton is a self taught artist based in north Sweden. Her art reflects this dreamlike landscape and its subtle changes during the four seasons. More importantly, it speaks of a unique way of living which is in harmony with nature.
Words
Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild.
Flowers
Montreal-based fashion designer Raku Inoue designs gorgeous life forms with fresh flower petals, blooms, and leaves blending natural inspirations with creative art.
In a mix of artistry, geometry, and technology, San Francisco-based Earthscape artist Andres Amador creates massive sketches in the beach sand – sometimes geometric, and sometimes more abstract and serendipitous – using rakes and ropes. The designs are temporary; where the waves don’t wash away his work, walking beach visitors and the wind will naturally muddy and dissolve the precise lines.
James Brunt is an English artist who creates beautiful land art using natural objects in his home county, Yorkshire. The artist’s works will leave you with a feeling of serenity and calmness and after seeing them, you’ll want to try your hand at it yourself. Here’s his code for creating art with nature.
Ellie Davies is a London based multimedia artist. She spent 7 years in forests of the UK slightly altering them to give a more fairy tale feel. The layers of meaning that man puts on nature is her passion and her work is supposed to evoke thoughts in that direction.
Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton collects sounds from around the world. He’s recorded inside Sitka spruce logs in the Pacific Northwest, thunder in the Kalahari Desert, and dawn breaking across six continents. An attentive listener, he says silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound but an absence of noise.
Artists For Nature
We hope you enjoyed this small collection of nature artists and a glimpse of their art. Feel free to grow the list by adding nature artists that have inspired you in the comments below.
Now more than ever, we need to get people out of their screens and homes to experience the gifts of our Earth. There is an urgent need for action to create a healthy society, and a healthy planet. And artists have a unique role to play in the process. Just as we have a role in spreading their art.
Healing Forest is a volunteer driven project that aims to bring people and forests closer to each other through creativity and mindfulness. Our aim is simple. Helping people heal. Helping forests heal. To get inspiring new ideas once a month, you can join our free newsletter.
Amazing ideas to create your own nature art: Nature Play
What can the wisdom of birds teach us about creating a life filled with joy, spontaneity, and song?
The latest research into bird intelligence leads to a fascinating conclusion: birds are thinkers. Not only are they capable of abstract thought, but they can also communicate with humans, solve problems, and experience complex emotions like grief.
In this post we explore remarkable insights from a variety of birds, through the voices of scientists, artists, seekers and bird lovers. You will also find helpful bird games that people of all age groups can enjoy and find enriching. And don’t miss the bird meditation as well as the wonderful forest gift at the very end.
Eat, Play, Nest: Wisdom of Birds
Lower your binoculars. See any bird or person in the full context of their being, feathers or skin. We all share the same air, same water, same earth, and same fate in the end.
~J. Drew Lanham
References for this blog post:
The Bird Way (2020) and The Genius of Birds (2016) by Jennifer Ackerman | Bird Meditation by Helen Macdonald, naturalist and author of H is for Hawk, and Vesper Flights | Bird Activities from Handbook of Bird educators by early-bird.in | Film by ND / healingforest
1. Bird Wisdom: Play is therapeutic
Ravens are highly playful birds. Birdwatchers around the world have seen them flying away with sticks, which they drop and then catch again. They also surf down pebbled river banks, and on roofs with loose tiles. Scientists struggle to explain such behavior. Play, after all, requires energy that could instead be used for growing or hunting. It’s also risky. If you’re surfing on pebbles down a river bank, you’re unlikely to spot predators like wolves or eagles.
In the late nineteenth century, the German philosopher Karl Groos wrote a book called The Play of Animals. In it, he argued that play allows animals to hone vital life skills like hunting and fighting. Though this assertion is yet to be proven, Groos’s theory is still popular among scientists.
There may be another explanation for why ravens play. Simply put: it’s pleasurable. When ravens play, their brains release dopamine – a chemical associated with sensations of pleasure. This suggests that, for them, play may well be a reward in itself. And that makes sense, considering the fact that ravens have been observed to forgo food if it means more playtime!
Activity: Bird Charades Each participant picks a favourite bird or picks up a bird name from a bowl. They then come up one by one and enact the name without speaking, while others try to guess the name. Once guessed the bird name is appended to the participant’s name. The advanced level of this game is done by trying to guess the bird just by enacting the mannerisms of the bird – the way it flies, eats, or moves on the ground.
2. Bird Wisdom: Learn the songs of life
The way birds learn to sing is similar to the way people learn languages. Just like human babies, birds are highly receptive to any sound and have the capacity to learn and imitate what they hear. But as a bird is exposed to the songs of its own species, it focuses on them and the songs of other species fade away. Well, except for mockingbirds, that is. Mockingbirds rather impressively hold on to this receptivity, which means they can absorb more and more songs over the course of their lives, which they in turn imitate.
As humans, we often limit our hearing to our own species. And even within that, many people tend to focus on words and opinions that match their own beliefs. How can we learn to expand our listening to include those whose voices are different from ours? Perhaps the birds can help.
BirdActivity: An exercise in listening Different species of birds make different kinds of sounds. The sounds also vary based on the situation and what the birds are communicating. Try this activity to get an idea of how varied vocalisation from a single bird species can be.
Pick a bird and follow it for as long as you can. Listen carefully to the kinds of sounds it makes.Try to represent the sounds in writing (e.g., ‘caw’ and ‘krrr’ are two crow sounds). Describe the situation in which the bird is making this sound (is there a predator around, is it preening itself, is it nesting season, etc ).
Write down a library of sounds made by that species (scientists called this a ‘repertoire’). Remember that males and females (if you can distinguish them) may have different repertoires. From your observations, are different sounds made in different situations? What could they mean?
Why do birds sing most at dawn? It happens universally, but even after thousands of years of witnessing this phenomenon we don’t know why. We cannot ask other species to explain themselves, since it is not language we share with the birds. It is music. Music does not exist to be decoded. We and the birds exist to make it. Make it together and the whole world feels its power, its joy.
~ David Rothenberg, Musician and philosopher
3. Bird Wisdom: Add a little art to life
A 1995 study on pigeons, conducted by Shigeru Watanabe, found that the birds could pick out a Monet and a Picasso from a group of similar paintings.
If someone told you that birds are capable of making art, you’d probably laugh. But some male birds actually do create beautiful displays to attract mates. For instance, while all birds make nests, some of them make far more elaborate structures. Just take the satin bowerbird, which, rather than merely building a nest, makes a bower. He begins by building walls with twigs of the appropriate size, placed in the correct places. Then he decorates the newly constructed walls with a variety of objects and flowers.
A female, when she arrives, examines the male’s bower and, if she’s interested, sticks around while the male dances to win her affection. This is a high-stakes situation because most males fail and only a small number of them mate with many different females. As a result, only the most impressive bower will do.
Bird Activity: Design a Nest The nests of birds are vital to their persistence. Yet bird nests are sometimes directly targeted by people (e.g. through hunting) or are indirectly destroyed when tree branches are cut or entire trees brought down. This activity involves trying to build a bird nest on your own. You can start by noticing different kinds of nests, and begin to appreciate the hard work involved in nest building.
Collect natural materials like grass, twigs, and leaves that you think birds use to build nests. Then, using these materials in any way you choose, construct nests that could hold eggs. The resultant nests should be strong and intact. You can test it out by putting some pebbles in it.
4. Bird Wisdom: Wisdom grows when you work in groups
Lots of birds use found objects in a variety of useful ways. For instance, burrowing owls scatter dung around their nests to attract tasty dung beetles, while African gray parrots use sticks to scratch their backs. And if it wasn’t impressive enough that some birds use tools, the New Caledonian crow actually makes them. This species of crow trims the branches off twigs to make long, straight sticks that they use to access hard-to-reach places. They even make hooked tools to catch insect larvae. This is a big deal because humans are the only other species that makes hooked tools; even chimps don’t make such sophisticated implements. But their greatest intelligence comes from social interactions.
Birds have social intelligence showing signs of empathy. For example, geese often fly in v-shaped formations which helps the younger and weaker members of the flock in flight. Rooks console each other after a fight with what strongly resembles kissing. And western scrub jays often flock to the place where their group members die.
So, birds are socially aware as well as smart, and social interaction might actually be the reason for their intelligence. After all, living in and maintaining a society requires intelligence and effort, as a brief glance at our own social problems makes clear. Some scientists think that social interactions are a primary reason for intelligence among animals – birds included.
Activity: Bird Orchestra The group is divided into 4 or 5 teams. Each team thinks of the call of a bird that they are able to sing themselves. One of the participants acts as the conductor of the orchestra. When the conductor points at a team, that team sings the bird call that they had chosen. The conductor can designate both start and stop gestures, and by gesturing at different groups in turn, can create a ‘symphony’ of bird songs. Participants take it in turn to act as the conductor.
5. Bird Wisdom: Every bird holds a message.
The beauty of the human mind lies in our ability to learn through observation. Mediation is the practice of fixing our attention on something that can help us grow our awareness and understanding of life.
Here is a beautiful meditative insight by Helen Macdonald on the vesper flight of swifts.
Swifts mate on the wing. And while young martins and swallows return to their nests after their first flights, young swifts do not. As soon as they tip themselves free of the nest hole, they start flying, and they will not stop flying for two or three years, bathing in rain, feeding on airborne insects, winnowing fast and low to scoop fat mouthfuls of water from lakes and rivers.
Swifts have, of late, become my fable of community, teaching us about how to make right decisions in the face of oncoming bad weather. They aren’t always cresting the atmospheric boundary layer at dizzying heights; most of the time they are living below it in thick and complicated air. That’s where they feed and mate and bathe and drink and are. But to find out about the important things that will affect their lives, they must go higher to survey the wider scene, and there communicate with others about the larger forces impinging on their realm.
Not all of us need to make that climb, just as many swifts eschew their vesper flights because they are occupied with eggs and young — but surely some of us are required, by dint of flourishing life and the well-being of us all, to look clearly at the things that are so easily obscured by the everyday. To take time to see the things we need to set our courses toward or against; the things we need to think about to know what we should do next. To trust in careful observation and expertise, in its sharing for the common good.
When I read the news and grieve, my mind has more than once turned to vesper flights, to the strength and purpose that can arise from the collaboration of numberless frail and multitudinous souls. If only we could have seen the clouds that sat like dark rubble on our own horizon for what they were; if only we could have worked together to communicate the urgency of what they would become. (Source)
Activity: Bird Meditation Which is your favourite bird? What life lesson have you learnt from them? Add your thoughts in the comments section, so that individual learning can turn into a collective one.
6. Bird Wisdom: Don’t forget to dance
To experience the power of dance try the our JOY WALK – a unique experience filled with fun activities that show you how to tap nature and movement to make the invisible, visible.
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A Forest Gift
The wonderful folks at early-bird.in have just released a free handbook for bird enthusiasts and educators. It is a curation of multiple ideas, activities, projects, games and overall best practices that can be carried out by one or few educators, over short durations of time, and at little or no cost. It has been conceived especially for those who feel limited by their lack of knowledge, or do not know where to begin in connecting children with nature and the endlessly fascinating world of birds. You can download a pdf version of the book at this link.
Healing Forest is a volunteer driven project that aims to bring people and forests closer to each other through creativity and mindfulness. Our aim is simple. Helping people heal. Helping forests heal.
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“Forest Bathing is not only about connecting to the nature that is beyond us, it is also about recognising that we are fully enmeshed in and as nature” ~ Ben Page.
This month we have a guest post by Ben Page, author of the recently published book ‘Healing Trees – A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing‘. In this post Ben offers mindful insights to connect with the nature within. Also included are 3 meditative invitations based on the elements of nature. These ideas serve as useful pointers to navigate the complexity of our inner world through simple walks wearing the shoes of our imagination.
Ben’s Journey into Forest Bathing
There are many stories I can tell about the beginning of this journey. Somehow, they are all interrelated. But today I’d like to tell you about the time when I was invited to train as a forest therapy guide.
I had just finished a 24 hour solo fast in the Inyo mountains as part of a program I was doing with the School of Lost Borders. It was a beautiful experience, laying beneath an ocean of stars that yielded to a brilliant sunrise and a slow wander among ancient bristlecone pines. Thinking back on it now, it almost feels like a dream.
When the group returned across the threshold, we descended the mountain to break the fast and it was there that a man tapped me on the should and said, “I want to show you something.” He invited me to close my eyes, took me by the shoulders, and lead me about 20 steps before inviting me to open my eyes again.
When I did, my nose was about a centimeter from a large tree that stood not far from where I had been sitting. I had been aware it was there, of course, but in that moment, I saw the tree in a new way. I remember the details of the bark being somehow arresting, like when you spot a rainbow and you just have to stop and watch and everything else in life seems to melt away. It was so simple and yet it was anything but simple. It was a paradox. How could I have missed something so sublime, only 20 steps away?
Next thing I know, this man who tapped me on the shoulder, Amos Clifford, asked me to take this training he’s offering. It sounds strange and I’ve never heard of what he called ‘Forest Therapy’ but there was something about the moment of opening my eyes and seeing that tree that lingered in me, called to me, spoke to me in a language that was familiar but I couldn’t remember. Perhaps the tree woke me up?
Forest of Calm – Pic by Dan A Cardoza
Our Inner Nature
Lately I’ve been quite captivated by the nature that is my body. As I deepen into witnessing it, I become aware that this body is not my own but is truly an ecosystem that houses many elements and beings. Furthermore, it is a porous ecosystem. Matter comes in, matter transforms and matter comes out; this is quite literally happening all the time. What is happening below the surface of my skin is a dynamic ecology that exists whether I am aware of it or not. It does not require me to know that it is there, nor does it care what I think of it. It’s fascinating to dig down into this strange relationship with myself, understanding that I am not simply me, this ‘Ben Page’ character, but I am also fully identified as Earth itself.
When I speak to people about this, we invariably arrive at this question of defining what we refer to as ‘inner nature.’ Most people hear these words and think that their inner nature has something to do with their character, with their psychological experience of being. They think that their inner nature has something to do with who they are. But in my experience, the inner nature has absolutely nothing to do with who I am, and everything to do with what I am. I wrote the following passage for the course I am currently teaching:
‘The inner nature that lives within us is difficult (if not impossible) to describe. It is something that can only be felt, something that can only be understood in the moment that it is animated within our hearts. It is a part of us that does not need to prove anything, nor does it need to compete for love. It is a part of us that is always at home in the world, that always belongs and cannot be separated. It is a part of us that is not properly “ours” but exists as a vast interconnecting energy that moves through all things. Perhaps we do not have individual, unique, personal “inner natures,” but instead experience the inner nature as an expression of our belongingness in and to the world. It is specifically because our inner nature cannot be possessed or contained individually that it can exist completely outside the ego.
One way of understanding our inner nature is that it is our sense of aliveness. It is something as humble and ordinary as breathing or gazing at the stars or holding a child in your arms. It is not abstractly meaningful in such a way that it could impress someone who was interested only in becoming heroic. Our aliveness is new in every moment and it defines our interconnectedness with the world. It blurs the lines between what we think of as “ourselves” and what we think of as “the world.” It is the art of simply being.
We embody this aliveness whenever we experience reality beyond the story of the ego, beyond the desire to make such a feeling “about us”. Such aliveness represents our most unapologetic, spontaneous, and ordinary selves and it is what we might call our ecological identity. Unlike our egoic identity, it is not built of ideas, but of the instantaneous, emergent experience of being alive. It is this part of ourselves that participates in the moment, the part of us that is enmeshed in relationships beyond our stories about them. It is the part of us that loves with such force that we forget who we are. Whenever we experience such aliveness immediately and directly, it is through our inner nature, not through our egos.
Among the beings of nature, the clouds, the waterfalls, the stones, animals and fungi, there is no need to become special. Everything knows that it has its place, with no compulsion to be anything more than what it is. In nature, there is no striving. Everything relaxes into simply being ordinary. In nature, all beings belong by the grace of their interconnectedness and not because they have done something heroic to earn it. In this aesthetic experience, we are called to remember that we can be like this as well.’
I wonder about this a lot. What does it mean to be nature, to be ecological? I find that my ego, the character of Ben-Page, really wants being ecological to be a story about it. But the more I sit in nature, just simply being, the more I am convinced that being nature isn’t a story about me. The inner nature is not mine; it is everything. So being ecological is not a process of self-discovery, it’s a process of letting go of the need to define myself only in human terms. Instead of seeing my nature as being about my individuality, I am learning to see my ecological identity as something intersubjective, a sense of selfhood that is informed by an infinite web of relationships. And it’s scary at first, because one worries that having this kind of experience might destroy the ego or that one could fall down the rabbit hole and never come back. There’s a sense of fear that makes us want to cling to ourselves more tightly than before. Yet, if we employ a gentle approach, we can always come back. The point is not to destroy the story of who we are, there is no destination that we strive to reach which would confer the inner nature upon us.
This destination is reached before a single step is ever taken. All we must do is remember how to relax into being a part of the places we find ourselves in. It’s happening all the time, this unfolding ecological experience; we are just too preoccupied with what it means or how it relates to our ego stories to see it spontaneously emerge. The inner nature is an aesthetic experience; what it looks like here, what it sounds like, what it tastes like, what it feels like, what it smells like and what it evokes in us. That’s the thing about living art. It’s not about grasping it; it is about experiencing it in full immediacy and then letting go just as quickly because there’s always something new in every single moment. Perhaps that is the expression of aliveness that is only possible through the inner nature?
Sunset Sky – Pic by Nick Sheerbart
Nature Embodiment Invitations
These invitations are crafted to invite you into a world without separation. Allow them to move through your body without effort; relaxation is the key.
Exploring ourselves as sky
As you stand, notice what it feels like to breathe. Notice the sensations in each moment as you inhale and exhale. Perhaps hold your hands against your rib cage or your stomach; what does this relationship between body, breath and air feel like? I wonder where this air has been before it has met you here in this moment? I wonder what beings this air has been a part of before it was a part of you? I wonder where you begin and the world ends? As you sit, notice what it feels like to breathe.
Loving ourselves as water
As you sit, notice what it feels like to have a heart. Perhaps placing your hands upon your chest, simply noticing that an ocean is always running through you. With each beat of your heart, the waves recede and advance upon every shore. Where has this water been before it was in your body? What other forms has it taken along its journey? Perhaps clouds, or glaciers or tidepools at the edge of the sea? As you sit, notice what it is like to have a beating heart.
Moving ourselves as earth
As you wander, notice what it feels like to be in your body. Notice that you are made up of interconnected bones and muscles and tendons. With every step, notice what it feels like to be in motion, how every movement ripples through the body. As you move, perhaps also notice that every moment you make is connected to the movement of the world around you; nothing moves in isolation and you are a always a participant in the dance of the world. As you wander, notice what it feels like to be in your body.
Ben Page Bio:
Ben Page is a Forest Therapy Guide, global advocate for the practice and the author of Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing. He is the founder of Shinrin Yoku LA and Integral Forest Bathing and has been guiding Forest Therapy walks since 2015. During his tenure as a trainer and mentor of guides, Ben has trained hundreds of guides around the world. From 2017-2020, he also served as the Director of Training for the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs, specializing in curriculum and pedagogical design. Since his practice began, Ben has been featured in such publications as Women’s Health, USA TODAY, Good Morning America, The Washington Post, and WebMD. Ben is also a co-founder of The Open School, Southern California’s only free democratic school. He holds a B.A. in religious studies from Carleton College and an M.A. in human development and social change from Pacific Oaks College.
A note about the book: This book is intended as an easy approach to forest bathing, a concept that is now making its way into health and wellness practices. Part spiritual guide and part practitioner’s handbook, this accessible, practical, positivity-rich book is designed to be taken on every walk to encourage mindfulness, contentedness, and presence in the moment.
Healing Forest 