Wild And Free

Three contemporary wildlife artists share their perspectives of the natural world.

- John O'hern

The interpretation of the Paleolithic rock art of Europe runs from their being the scribblings of brute savages to their being complex symbols of the interrelationships of the male and the female. And there’s a whole world of theories in between.

The 19th-century Duwamish Chief Seattle said, “If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.”

Not much later, the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, wrote, “Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god...No river contains a spirit...no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants and animals, nor does he speak to them thinking they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied.”

A hundred years later, artists draw from mythological stories of wildlife, scientific discoveries and their own conscious and subconscious experiences to create their work—perhaps reforming some of those connections or causing viewers to make their own.