The Creative Interpretation of Nature

Illustration: William Morris. Rose textile design, 1877.

One of the most consistent and widely reflected inspirational points used by creative individuals of any discipline is that of the natural world. It has stimulated untold generations of work and continues to do so, and will no doubt be the source of countless future generations. There is something about the world around us that constantly reconnects in our creative experiments. This connection can be interpreted in a number of ways, but mainly through ideas of observation and empathy. 

Observation can never be a truly group experience but always an individual one. Every human sees the external world around them, as indeed they do the internal, differently from the next individual. A tree for example, will appear in seven billion ways depending on the eye construction of each human on the planet and the connections to the brain from the eye, and also the links within that brain. We may all think that we share the same experience, but of course we never can, nor should we. It is our uniqueness, despite a world population of seven billion that allows us to interpret and reinterpret in so many ways and levels, the world we inhabit and see around us. 

Illustration: William Morris. Tulip textile design, 1877.

In that respect, creativity can only ever be personal and identified to the individual through their own practical observations and experiences. The way this is then interpreted externally through art, design or craft is yet another unique level of understanding between the individual and their surroundings. Line and colour are just as personal as initial observation and there are just as many variations of colour and line as their individuals on the planet.

Therefore, all art, design and craft by its very nature is unique and individual and although mass production has taken humans beyond the realm of a contained connection with each individual product, there is still the initial individual and unique connection with the original. In textile design for example, the surface pattern may well be printed or woven in staggeringly large numbers through mass production, but the pattern itself will always have a small and intimate connection between the original human creative and their surroundings. This relationship is an important and often vital one for creative people, the connectivity between themselves and their surroundings being a lifelong one.

It is sometimes hard for us to see ourselves within the midst of the complexity of nature, rather than standing aside from it as we are often portrayed. We tend to regard nature as an entity that we are somehow excluded from. This disconnection has led to a belief that the natural world is a commodity that needs to be both exploited and coveted. In some respects, the process of commodifying everything around us, whether it be plant, rock or fauna, ultimately reflects back in on ourselves and we start to see our species not as seven billion fellow individuals, but as a conglomerate mass, a market to be as equally exploited and coveted as the external natural world.

Illustration: William Morris. Evenlode textile design, 1883.

The creative interpretation of nature brings us both comfort and a sense of belonging. Whether expressed through tapestry or embroidery, through surface pattern or lace, or indeed any other discipline where decoration or ornament is used. It would be very hard to find an individual that did not own something within their home or amongst their personal belongings that did not reflect the natural world in some form or another. 

This connectedness and obvious emotional relationship that we all have in some form with the natural world around us, whether we see that world as a creative or not, begs the question as to why then can we be so dismissive and destructive of that same world that we admire so much when seen in a small piece of fabric.

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Illustrative Work of Jessie M. King

Illustration: Jessie Marion King. Illustration to Poems of Shelley, 1907.

Jessie Marion King was a Scottish artist and illustrator who produced much of her more memorable work in the early years of the twentieth century. Although she is mainly known for her illustrative work during the early period of the twentieth century, she also produced textile work including batik in which she was quite extensively committed well into the 1920s, as well as embroidery. She had been both a student and teacher at Glasgow School of Art and was one of the artists and designers that helped to cement the unique style that Glasgow was to call its own, a combination of Arts and Crafts practicalities and Art Nouveau aesthetics.

The illustrative piece by King that is given as an example in this article was published in 1907. It was part of an edition of Shelley's poetry and bears the text at the bottom of her illustration: 

...until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o'er the dreaming earth...

The poem is Ode to the West Wind and the illustration produced by King was just one of a set that were beautifully and creatively engineered by her in order to appear both ethereal and yet to have significant strength in order to reflect the art of poetry to both change and reflect imagination. King was particularly good at producing illustrative work that carefully balanced itself between confident artistic expression and delicate poetic imagination. She was said by many of her contemporary critics to have taken her work beyond the mere reflection of the books she illustrated. It was suggested that her own creative work added to the full complement of a book, implying that the publication may well have been the poorer without her contribution.

Interestingly, two of the early books that King illustrated were by William Morris who, like many of her generation, she saw as a combination of mentor, originator and guide. The Wood Beyond the World and Defence of Guinevere were books that were both steeped in the Arts and Crafts Movement as well as the earlier medieval revival that poured into and inevitably influenced the craft movement in both England and Scotland for much of the nineteenth century. However, there were other influences outside of the remit of Morris and his movement that were equally compelling and intriguing to King and her generation, though would perhaps have trouble the sensibilities of Morris.

A number of critics drew comparisons between the work of King and that of Aubrey Beardsley. She was by no means unique in this comparison and it is interesting that many of the artists and designers of the Glasgow movement were also linked with Beardsley, particularly Margaret and Frances MacDonald. While there is indeed a layer of Beardsley's influence across the work of a number of King's contemporaries, it can only ever be said to have been one of the influences, but not necessarily an overriding one.

King is an interesting artistic expression of the coming together, even overlapping, of two worlds. Both of these worlds rarely saw a commonality, but in many ways they were indelibly linked. Those two worlds were the English and Scottish Arts and Crafts movement and the European based Art Nouveau. The expression of the physical and observational parameters of nature encased in the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, along with the more cerebral imaginations of nature beyond its physical limitations as often expressed in the wider parameters of the Art Nouveau movement, particularly in literature and music, seem to come together effortlessly in Kings illustrative work. In some ways she was a creative artist that had gone beyond the immediate and the home-grown, beyond the mental limitations of the Arts and Crafts movement, towards the expanded universe of Art Nouveau and its dependency on the fantastical, or at least beyond the everyday imaginations of most. It is this movement beyond the roots of the native and practical Arts and Crafts that spells the change in emphasis and mental space that creative artists had occupied within the England and Scotland for so much of the nineteenth century.

On a more practical level, it is interesting to note that King produced textile work in tandem with her illustrative. More interesting still is that fact that at least a proportion of that textile work was embroidery. Drawing with embroidery was a skill she held in common with a number of the new creatives during the early years of the twentieth century. This freedom of movement gave embroidery a wider artistic remit, allowing compositions to go beyond the traditions of the craft. That artists and designers took the initiative and produced work that could be both complex and simplistic, depending on attitude taken towards line, gave greater freedom of expression and helped extend the parameters of the craft into that of the fine art world. King herself produced line work in both illustration and embroidery; it is tempting therefore to wonder how much each discipline influenced the other. Either way, King produced an astounding confidence in her work and was rightly admired for both her individual creative direction, as well as her ability to reflect the sensibilities and sensitivity of the new century.

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