Expressions of nature

The 19th century poet Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote that, with the right state of mind, we could see into the essential quality of the world around us. He called this “inscape,” the aspect of the living world that makes it what it is, its fundamental being.

Poets and painters have this in common. If they choose to make “nature” their subject matter, they wish “to see into the life of things,” as William Wordsworth said.

Some may call this sentimental, or even romantic. But for others, it is an essentially ethical endeavor, an insistence that there is something other than suffering in the world, and that there is a moral imperative to be a vehicle for it, to bring solace.

The best art of this kind may be simple, but it is never simplistic. In fact, its complexity is found in its very simplicity. What it leaves out may be more important than what it includes, so that we may see the essential more clearly.

Lance Morrison paints hummingbirds. A few of his canvases are on exhibit at Sue Greenwood Fine Art, 330 N. Coast Highway, through the end of the month. They are all paintings of the same small creature, yet each is different.

Although Morrison does smaller canvases, the most impressive are large-scale oils that contain a single bird. “Sustain” is a massive 66 by 72 inches. Hovering just off center is a blur of a bird, abstractly rendered, with a touch of paint suggesting its iridescent red throat. The wings are a haze of movement. The scale is slightly larger than life size, which only makes the bird seem to approach us as the ground moves back.

The colors are unexpected ? umbers or ochres ? and the paint is layered in patterns of light to dark worthy of Caravaggio. The texture Morrison gives the paint suggests linen; it is sometimes even grid-like.

The paintings represent remarkable restraint; so much negative space, and the subject executed in just a few strokes. But what we see is the “inscape” of a remarkable creature, moving through the air at will, and with a drive to survive so fierce that it fears nothing.

The simplicity of the composition stirs us into thought. With a heart that beats so much faster than our own, pumping blood that runs hotter, unconstrained by gravity, who knows what time may mean, or love to such a thing? It seems remarkable that something so beautiful would be unaware of its own beauty.

The gallery is a good place to go to think about these things. The equally complex canvases of Paul Brigham are also there. “Cedar Waxwings and Robins” (60 x 36, mixed media on canvas) is full of bird-wisdom. Although they perch on branches, the parchment-like quality of the canvas makes them seem to emerge from it. Patterns and silhouettes appear in the textured surface: leaves, pencil lines, lotus blossoms. But the robins have that stout confidence that robins have, and the waxwings seem voracious. These aren’t studies; they are portraits of individuals.

Likewise, “Baltimore Orioles and Red-Winged Blackbirds” shows the essential contrast in both the colors and the personalities of these birds, as the red-wing fluffs and lets out his creaking song with a wide-open beak. We can see into the life of these things.

Finally, you might check out Kenna Moser’s quaint botanical paintings. Although not as complex or well-executed as Morrison’s or Brigham’s work, they strive to reveal something essential about our relationship with the natural world. Moser layers old letters and prints under beeswax, painting on or near the surface of the last layer, which creates an interesting “frosted” effect.

Two canvases in particular stand out ? “Natural Selection” and “Centrifugal Force” (both 36 x 36, beeswax and collage on wood panel). They present a playful curiosity shop of suggestive shapes and images: tangled plant specimens, trumpet blossoms, old gardening tools, even little gnomes and chess pieces work in a kind of harmony. An old orrery (a model universe) sits below a plant stem, and we recognize a kind of naiveté in our desire to understand the patterns of the natural world.

T.S. Eliot said April was the cruelest month. But the stirring of life can make us believe, again, that there’s something to the intensity of April worth capturing, and contemplating.