For me, the approach to nature is always through painting. Since 1998 it has been my language and an endless field of experimentation to see the world again and explore my relationship with it and the limits of my painting.

I draw nature to tell about life in all its phases: energy, fragility, resilience, beauty. Painting is my land. Nature is my labyrinth, my refuge, a return to the essence of life, where the enjoyment of colors and colors becomes an antidote to darkness.

This year there were many exhibitions on the theme of the natural world, and even with different approaches. The means of expression change, the time has changed our view of the world. However, now we understand that we are responsible for what we experience, that we are an integral part of this chain. Ecology awakens and makes us sensitive, and art acts as a means of thinking and empathy.

This is roughly the central idea of ​​an exhibition presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris called “Réclamer la Terre” (in free translation “A Claim to the Earth”, will run until 4/9). It brings together 14 artists and tries to show that nature is not just a space in which we move, a space that nourishes us, but that we are part of it in constant interaction and relationship – “Comunaute du sol”, the community of the soil, as the saying goes. ecologist Russell Carson.

Primary materials

The projects use primary materials such as wood, stone, shells, dry plants, as well as technological tools. There are videos, sculptures, paintings, installations, photographs. It is a dialogue between ecology, anthropology, sociology, as well as such old practices as the representation of space, which in other societies works therapeutically. Of course, the image of nature often appears in this event, and nature itself with its materials, while painting, as the main visual language, is minimally present.

Another exhibition on a similar theme is presented at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the title “Végétale – L’école de la Beauté” (“World of Vegetables – School of Beauty”, until 09.04). This is a wonderful work, a comprehensive presentation organized by Maison Chaumet, with the participation of magnificent paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, jewelry, furniture, tapestries by artists such as Monet, Redon, Brassai, Otto Dix, with the participation of many museums and private collections. Among them is an amazing ancient Greek wreath from Vergina.

Ecology awakens and makes us sensitive, and art acts as a means of thinking and empathy.

Curator-botanist Mark Janson invites us to look at nature through the prism of art and beauty. Beauty as it can be experienced through the necessity and perfection of plant forms. This is a lesson in the perseverance of fragile flowers, rebirth after a pause. This is an exhibition that looks like a garden, in which works from different periods talk to each other, revealing the appearance of their time.

In Athens, the exhibition “Songlines” by Katerina Katsifarakis in the garden of the Palace of Music, curated by Anna Kafetzis, offers a different but relevant reading of the subject. It is a sensitive dialogue with space with subtle visual interventions that create a path for the visitor. Or several routes, since everyone can choose their own. Somewhere you will find an image with a fleeting speck of sunlight, somewhere a sea or a stone with a white line. A bird is looking at us, the image of a small spider sitting on trees, a web.

Composition in space

Here the artist’s attempt to create a composition in space is very different from working in two dimensions. In painting there is an organic nature of matter, texture, the picture itself, which takes shape and thus an image is born. In this specific space, the organic is the basis, and the intervention of the technological image is the form. The artist is invited to feel the space and respond to it. Ultimately, work is this dialogue. However, this year began with a big surprise from the Fondation Cartier – Damien Hirst’s Cherry Blossom exhibition with cherry blossoms. It was an exhibition of painting, full of pleasure, rhythm, density, impressive compositions and colors. The indefatigable desire of the viewer to experience again and again the riot of dots of pink, white, blue, brown, in works that, although they were variations on the same theme, each retained the energy and adventurousness of its own uniqueness.

Hirst himself, according to him, in the midst of a pandemic felt the need to test his desire for life through painting. The depiction of this flowering and mutation of the heretic artist into something new has a meaning that goes beyond the subject itself: it is a matter of choosing an expressive language – painting – which he himself considered finite. This is a sign that painting is an impulse directed towards the desire for life against the fear of death.

* Mrs. Anna Maria Tsakali is an artist. Her solo exhibition “The Seasons” was recently presented at Kalfayan Galleries Athens.