Hi friends!! I received a mail with the same title as this piece, from dear friend Shruti........a collection of pictures that actually give the feel of a gigantic paint-box full of the rarest hues having fallen from heaven, torn through the clouds and rained on earth, bathing everything it touched in a way that only Nature can! The pic above is just a sample of the collection! John Keats had said, "A thing of Beauty is a joy forever!" How true!
Beauty, that thing which is so pure, yet so subjective, for as has been oft iterated, "Beauty lies in the eyes of the Beholder!" Yet, while the beauty of a person or of a painting may be argued upon, the beauty of nature has always been appealing to everyone. Ever heard of a person who cannot appreciate a serene waterfall; or an ice-capped mountain towering above the clouds (!!!); or a field of colourful flowers (remember Wordsworth's Daffodils????!!!!); the view from the mountaintop.........the deep, almost bottomless valley as seen from the top of a cliff, with the calming sound of water flowing somewhere under sounding like music to the ears; the oranges, reds, yellows and violets of a mesmerizing sunset; or better still, the warmth filling yourself as you see a bright light, sent by the glorious morning sun as you stand in the middle of thick fog; the tiny drops of dew sparkling on leaves and creating the prism effect as the sun shines on them; the gradual opening of a bud and turning into a beautiful flower.....oh I could go on forever!
Nature has, by far, been the favorite topic of poets over time, its beauty having been immortalized in the works of uncrowned king of nature poetry, Sir William Wordsworth, Henry Vaughan, Coleridge and several others. Nature has been no less an inspiration to artists as it has been to poets. Many have tried to recreate nature's magic on canvas with varying degrees of success! Why, then, does nature so inspire the men (and women!!) of art and literature like nothing else???? Or How??!
The answer lies in four small words.........NATURE HAS IT ALL!!!
A poem or a painting is, at the very fundamental level, an expression. An expression of delight, an expression of joy, an expression of disgust, an expression of sorrow, an expression of compromise, an expression of opinion or thought.......an expression! You want to depict beauty, you turn to nature (for obvious reasons!). You want to portray human nature or emotions, you could turn to nature - benevolence and the shade of the tree; sharing and the birds in a nest; love and swans or the doves or the flowers; tolerance and the animals of the jungle (or the fish of the sea); peace and the waterfall; anger and the cyclone (tsunami???!!!); permanence and the mountains (They're always there!); hopelessness and the volcano (Enough is Enough!); ambition and the river (it always meets the sea....NO MATTER WHAT!), so on and so forth. These are associations that have stood the test of time....always been there for the observant eye to see and the thinking mind to connect. You want to portray anything and you can turn to nature.........if you look hard, you'll find what you want!
Of course, I don't mean to say ONLY nature inspires. All I can say with conviction is that it is what inspires most! It's something that always turns ME on, and I'd like to see some people who disagree with me :-P!
And one concluding point - To see HIS (GOD)/HER (Mother Nature!) greatest creation yet, simply turn to the mirror!!!!!!! You may not see the most colourful creation, but you'll see the one HE/SHE's most proud of!!!!!
More later!!!! Till next time....from slo, it's Tally-ho!
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