REMARKABLE AND CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS

REMARKABLE NATURE: a project by Tineke Bruijnzeels

Tineke Bruijnzeels writes: Living in the French countryside close to the Alps, I'm getting more and more aware of the wonders of nature. For the Remarkable Nature project, I worked with the replies I received asking for people's experience of nature. I received replies from Ann Rapstoff, Alison Carter Tai, Cally Trench, Lis Mann, Joan Skelton Smith, Brigitte Ritschard, Philip Lee, and Lynne Grace

These seven images are the first stage of this project. I made small objects from the bark of three birch trees in my garden. These small works embody what is important in my work: change and the passing of time.

Monday (2010)

Tuesday (2010)

Replies used in these works:

Every morning I go out and walk around my garden and every day is different, I notice something new, something changed, something I didn't see before, another colour, another plant that wasn't there yesterday. I bask in its growth.

I especially love shadows, which play an important part in my work.

I am astonished every day by the beauty of nature and by the force of man who can seize it and dissimulate it. I see these immense nets covering apple trees to protect them from birds: less apple trees flowering, less birds, less butterflies circling in the orchards.

Wednesday (2010)

Thursday (2010)

Friday (2010)

Saturday (2010)

Sunday (2010)

Calligraphy (2011)

Reply used: I think the most extraordinary thing about being in the countryside is how little writing there is. Everywhere we go in a town there are signs, advertisements, and notices. The natural world has no writing in it. You can't read, so you have to look.

Tineke: I looked for writing in nature and I was touched by the interaction between pine needles and their shadows. The forms of those two seemed to communicate, to talk, whisper, play and dance together. While working on the images on Photoshop I discovered that nature has its own writing: light and shadow create nature’s calligraphy through rhythm, colour, shape and repetition.

Change (Snow) (2012)

Tineke Bruijnzeels writes: I've read somewhere: 'The only certainty in life is change.' It is when looking at nature that I have become even more aware of continuous transformation and constant change. Nothing lasts. These photographs are of snow on a skylight window. The first four images were taken of an east-facing window; the second four images were taken of a west-facing window.

Replies used:

The contrast between the beauty of nature and the potential havoc and destruction nature can cause.

"View from my window
Coal black crows
Sweeping across
And through my Sycamore Tree Spring in tightest green bud."

It is at the coast that I feel most in tune with, and in awe of, nature. The sea fascinates me and I love to go into the sea, especially naked. It is, I believe, the continual movements of the sea that makes it so interesting, exciting and, at times, frightening. Perhaps it is that we have an intrinsic link with the sea - did we emerge from it many millions of years ago, I wonder?

Every day I look out of my big picture window on the most amazing view - rolling hills, a farm nestling in the fold of the hill and with the sea in the distance. The view changes daily; sometimes the sea mist comes in and we cannot see anything, othertimes the sun sparkles on the sea and to see the sunrise over the hills is amazing. It changed again when we had snow with the sun throwing long long shadows of the trees.

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Ann Rapstoff
Alison Carter Tai
Cally Trench
Lis Mann
Joan Skelton Smith
Brigitte Ritschard
Philip Lee
Lynne Grace