Allowing yourself not self-expression but the encounter with the nowness of experience [with any material] is to unbind yourself and to find your way to meaning.
—William Stafford
There is meaning in recognizing one’s self as part of the natural world. Appreciating the natural forces to which we all belong fosters this connection. However, it is not always obvious how we might connect with nature as a living being, one that changes and responds to attention. For me, though, creativity provides that energetic connection. I have found a way to connect to the landscape and the energy of land while painting en plein air using earth pigment from the soil on the South African Agulhas Plain.
Painting plein air is the act of painting outside and, usually, completing the painting while still in front of the subject. I pack an easel and paint in the back of the car and drive to spots that provide views to paint, or I walk from the car out into the landscape to paint. Often, this also means returning to the same place over and over to experience the different lights and changing weather.
Earth pigment has become a useful material, and I have come to value it as an integral part of the experience of painting the landscape. The pigments are from the clay I find along the road cuts. There is pink clay, white clay, ochre, and red clay here on the plains. A simple straining process and gum arabic binder turn the clay into a thick, paint-like consistency. I seal the completed artwork by painting on glair, the strained-off liquid of whipped egg white. It is always so satisfying to paint with materials from the place I am painting in. I even use black ink, walnut ink, and sometimes acorn ink in my line work.
Plein air painting has a very immediate feel. While out there, I am present with my full attention and focus. It feels as if I am performing with the landscape: In standing on a ridge overlooking the hills to the ocean amongst nature’s sounds, or in painting as the wind picks up and the weather strengthens, there is an attention to looking carefully, which leads to an acknowledgment of the power and beauty of this land. The observation and attention that painting requires is a way of celebration. I think the land responds.
My senses become sharpened, colors intensify, shapes strengthen and come closer, and sound amplifies. It feels as if the land is responding to my appreciation and awe. My understanding of this feeling is clarified by Eckart Tolle’s philosophical view in A New Earth on the reciprocity of nature:
When you recognize the sacredness and beauty of a flower or a tree, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition and awareness, nature, too, comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you.
In my work I use abstraction as my guide, as my interest lies in following shapes and lines to describe the energy I feel in the land. I look at the tensions of the landscape held in its curves and junctures, its textures and contrasts, and try to picture those. At the same time, I imagine the unseen stories and histories held in the land.
The landscape I am painting is not far from Cape Town, South Africa, where I was born. Standing on these open plains I sense my place both on the map and in the arc of time. As the southernmost tip of the African continent, Agulhas is a place of powerful climatic, geographic, and historical significance.
This is a place where oceans meet and currents change direction. The cold Atlantic meets the warm Indian Ocean, and the Agulhas current turns east, back on itself. This rugged coastline and its hidden reefs and storms have taken scores of ships en route to and from the East. This coast is also home to a significant chapter in the story of humankind. Beyond the visible past is an unseen history of human settlement that existed long before the first colonists arrived. The first people of the Southern Cape were a branch of the human family who moved south from East Africa.
Archaeological evidence shows that people have been here for tens of thousands of years. The discovery of a 73,000-year-old drawing in a cave about 130 kilometers east of Agulhas is one such piece of evidence. It is a small drawing made with an ochre crayon, and one of the oldest drawings known. It transports me across time to think that I am using the same material, the clay that runs through this landscape, to make my own marks.
Mark making has always been an orienting practice for me as I navigate my multiple identities of South African, American, and ancestrally Scottish, Arab, and German. Within my South African identity, which I identify with most, I am dislodged from belonging to the landscape by Apartheid’s narrative of separation. Apartheid’s spatial divisions are still embedded in the land. The question of how to locate myself in this complex yet ancient cultural landscape is not obvious.
Yet in this work, in this geography, and in this winter season, I have a valuable chance to slow down and question the meaning of things. Painting the landscape en plein air is a matter of timing between big rainstorms. In between the storms is a time for tending to fires and long nights. The practice of art takes me out of myself and connects me to this land and nature’s larger forces.
We humans are here, I believe, to recognize the natural world in awe and appreciation. In turn, she reciprocally responds to us. This is the performance; the actor and the audience are interchangeable. The vistas speak to me, and through creativity, there is a refuge in recognizing a place in the landscape.
Image Credits
All images by Gwendolyn Meyer
Featured Image: Waterford Road view. Medium: Ink, earth pigment, glair.
Images in carousel #1: Rietfontein Road. Medium: Walnut ink white clay.
The River. Medium: Walnut ink, Strand veld pink earth pigment, glair.
Images in carousel #2: From the Reserve. Medium: Ink, strandveld pink earth pigment, glair.
View over Melkbosvlei. Medium: Ink, walnut ink, earth pigment, glair.
Images in carousel #3: Waterford Road view. Medium: Ink, earth pigment, glair.
The river south from Elim Road. Medium: Walnut ink. earth pigment, glair.
Images in carousel #4: Rietfontein East. Medium: Ink, walnut ink, pencil, earth pigment, glair.
Looking SW over Melkbosvlei. Medium: Walnut ink, earth pigment, glair.
