Featured Artist of The Week: Johann Booyens!
"“We have art so that we shall not die of reality”... For me, Nietzsche is one of the most profound and intellectually stimulating voices. For him, art was not the imitation of nature, but a metaphysical complement that will enable the transcendence of nature itself. Similarly, Cézanne stated that art and nature present themselves as two parallel harmonies, existing alongside one another, thereby being equal. It is these liminal spaces, the transitional time/space between two ideas, that I find fascinating. The most common and ancient of these spaces exist in the threshold between culture and nature. Art is the fundamental metaphysical activity of humankind. "
Selected artwork:
Artworks in order:
Mugdock Snow III, 2021, Etching on cotton paper edition of 15, 50cm x 70cm, £300
The third etching of the Mugdock series showing the simplicity nature holds when reduced to only a few grass shoots, horizon and trees. The winter snow seems to greatly enhance the landscape precisely because it omits so much.
Mugdock Snow IV, 2021, Etching on cotton paper edition of 15, 50cm x 70cm, £300
The reflection of the trees and the slight disturbance of the water surface, instill a kind of silence found in the white months. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I visit these silent but highly productive places.
Paternoster, 2021, Monotype on cotton paper, 50cm x 70cm, £410
Paternoster is a small fishing village, whose name is derived from the 17th century Portugese sailors' graffiti Padre Nostre. It is an arid and hot place and to make sense of the place, it is needed to categorise it. Generally we use three ways (as found in Hegel's Dialectic) to define both things and places.
Queens Trees, 2021, Monotype on cotton paper, 45cm x 71cm, £470
North of Glasgow stands the outcrop known as Queens View due to its panoramic scenery. The dark plantation next to it, with its white PVC pipes protecting saplings, seemed much more scenic and contrasting than the mundane view.
Transcendence, 2021, Monotype and drypoint on cotton paper, 58cm x 76cm, £520
“The unit of survival is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself.” --Gregory Bateson. Understanding our dependence on the natural world and our bodies as embedded and not against the natural world, leads to a kind of spontaneous alignment with being.
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