The Artistry of Nature

Wander with me, through her gallery

Step quietly. The gallery is open. 

Her artwork is not framed in gold and hung upon a wall.
It is not spotlit in silence, captioned in italics, or roped off with signs that say do not touch.
It is not encased in glass, or auctioned to the highest bidder.

You will not find her sculptures on plinths,
Nor her textiles hemmed and stretched behind velvet cords.
No alarm will sound if you lean in close.

Her masterpieces breathe. Grow. Blur at the edges.
They are woven into thickets and engraved beneath bark,
Sung from treetops and stirred by the breeze.

An ephemeral web of gossamer
Strung between stems and beaded with jewels of morning dew.

An ancient sculpture of hollowed stone
Carved by wind and water, sheltering generations of wings.

Come with me, and let’s walk a while.

Let's meander along the river in late afternoon, 
Where mayflies rise and fall, shimmering through their brief ballet of plié and pirouette over the swaying reeds.

Run your hand along the pale bones of this dead tree
And feel the delicate etching of the engraver beetles who once lived here,
Carving intricate patterns beneath the bark. 

Drawn with neither compass nor ruler, 
Fibonacci traces the whorls of a shell, growth marked by ribbed crescents, each curve remembering the last.

Follow the spiral of an unfurling fern,
The golden ratio uncoiling in verdant green
Each frond an equation measured in patterns of light.

Pause beneath the bramble-thicket,
And look up into the lace-edged ruin of the wasp's nest,
A paper cathedral crafted from chewed bark and spit.

Watch the honey bee's passionate dance, 
Their bodies dusted gold, gathering nectar and shimmering warmth,
Sealing in wax the amber distillation of summer.

Her paintbrush laden with sunlight,
She daubs saffron into the heart of the rock rose,
Then drips crimson ink to bleed upon virgin petals.

She scatters beneath your feet
Daisies frosted with crystalline lace,
And beads the grass with frozen stars.

Linger by the pond,
where the dragonfly’s wings catching the light like cut glass,
Iridescence glittering with diamond dust.

We wander through her gallery
Thinking ourselves creators,
Yet every masterpiece we make are only echoes of a song she has already composed.

There is no beauty we have imagined
that she did not shape first in root and rock and bone.
No pattern we have carved or stitched or sketched
That was not already written in the branching of rivers,
The veins of a leaf, the arc of a wing.

Our muse, our mother, the maker of wonder.

There is no entry fee. 
The only price is the one she must pay,
For our disregard and neglect, our wilful, ravenous consumption.
Our wasteful destruction.

She pays with the life of the great auk,
With the last breath of the thylacine,
The last flight of the passenger pigeon.

She pays with lost birdsong and stilled migrations,
With forests felled and waters choked,
With beauty traded for convenience,
And wonder buried beneath waste.

We have unmade much that cannot be remade.
But still, perhaps, it is not too late.
Not too late to turn our ingenuity,
Our inherited creativity,
Our love of beauty, our intelligence, our will
Toward protection, conservation, restoration.

We must shape that which heals.
We must craft a future that holds.
If we turn away,
The light will dim.
The colours will fade.
The gallery will close.

And the final silence will be the echo of our wilful neglect.

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All the photographs included in this letter are my own, and many of them are included in the free While I Was Drawing Gallery — a growing collection of my favourite photos for subscribers to print and display at home, use in your own publications, as reference images for drawing or painting, for your website or social media, and in your own creative adventures.