RUTH SEIDLER

Lately I have been inspired and troubled by an idea about human response to beauty.

When we see something that is beautiful, our impulse is to reproduce it;  that is, what we find beautiful, we want -- and perhaps need -- to copy.  In the physical realm, we encounter the beauty of nature: flowers, birds, the clouds in a blue sky, our loved ones. Instinctively we create images of these things to display and to decorate our world, as a way to keep that beauty in mind. Humans' innate creative forces lead to myriad ways of representing nature, ranging wildly in style and focus.

 

At the same time, we have a perverse inconsistency in our response to natural beauty. We admire, and yet we ignore and even wantonly destroy the wondrous in nature wherever it is in our way. Those birds and butterflies that give us so much visual pleasure, symbolic significance and literal sustenance are utterly disregarded when it is inconvenient to consider their well-being. 

In my still life paintings I am looking at this idea of the human capacity to appreciate natural beauty and the impulse to reproduce it. I often include objects and images -- representations of birds or insects, for example -- which are not my own responses to natural models, but those of others. My own paintings are, then, a tribute to the human ability to be aware of the beauty, complexity and fragility of nature and to the endless variation of our creative expression. But for me they are also a reminder that we should not be left with only our representations, for no matter how artful, they do not replace the real thing.

 

My studio is at my home in Alford, where I meet the real thing every day.