High school history and geography classes were wasted on me. All that memorization — dates, locations, terms, yada yada yada. Sure, I could regurgitate it, but who needs it? Not me, or so I thought… Now, as I’m drawn to landscapes, history and geography can’t be dismissed so easily, and I’m trying to fill in some gaps. 

As part of that effort, all last year & beyond, I was slowly reading Landscape and Memory. A heavy tome, it took me over a year — of reading a bit, of taking notes, of absorbing ideas. Other research had me examining the Scottish Highlands, while in it. Another excellent book, The Hidden Life of Trees, helped me understand so much more than I understood about the appeal of those twisty branches. What I found out turned my thinking completely around. Per Simon Schama, we’ve been projecting onto the outside world:

Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.

Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama, p 61

In the time of the Brothers Grimm, the forest was a terrifying place; the Romans preferred their landscapes to be shaped by human hand, and the forest was for the wild & uncivilized folk. It disappeared due to economic needs, to build empires. The searing starkness of the Scottish Highlands comes from clearing both the trees, and brutally, the people.

Trees have mattered to folk from pagans through many associations over the years as symbolic of renewal. Rivers idealize seeking uncharted territory. Solitary trees, which I find so beautiful, are lonely; trees are meant to be part of a forest of interconnected growth. But how to incorporate this all into my art?

Ellie Davies, a UK artist, approaches some of this thinking in her excellent statement, where she notes that “UK forests have been shaped by human processes over thousands of years … As such, the forest represents the confluence of nature, culture, and human activity.” She engages with the landscape & records it:

“These altered landscapes operate on a number of levels. They are a reflection of my personal relationship with the forest, a meditation on universal themes relating to the psyche and call into question the concept of landscape as a social and cultural construct. Most importantly they draw the viewer into the forest space, asking the them to consider how their own identity is shaped by the landscapes they live in.”

Ellie Davies, artist statement excerpt

That sounds in line with the thinking I’ve been doing: layers of thought, a continued pull to the land, and further exploration of self. But I hadn’t realized how many layers there were, and added by our culture, so cumulatively. Time for some more digging — something I know how to do thanks to all that structured class time, underappreciated though it was.

Perhaps you have your own methods of pondering the landscape, the horizon, the environment we occupy, even if it’s just getting outside whenever possible. Let’s keep doing that: learning what we can, doing what we can, to appreciate our world and protect it for the future.