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PARKS AND WOODLAND

Here is a collection of images of Parks and Woodland, some local to Glasgow such as Pollok Park and the surrounding area and some from places further afield, you can use these as inspiration for making your own artworks. You'll also find links to artists who have made work relating to the themes of forests, woodland, and forms found in nature such as Anya Gallacio, David Nash, David Hockney, Henri Matisse, Ernst Haeckel, and Albrecht Durer.

The Hayward Gallery are offering a virtual tour of their exhibition Among The Trees, " By turns poetic, adventurous and thought-provoking, this group exhibition explores our relationship with trees and forests.

Among the Trees transports us around the world – from Colombian rainforests and remote Japanese islands to olive orchards in Israel and a 9,550-year-old spruce in Sweden.

By drawing attention to the beauty, scale and complexity of trees and forests, the 38 artists in this exhibition turn our vision of the natural world on its head, inviting us to see it with new eyes." Hayward Gallery

CLICK HERE to view Among The Trees.

Woodland scene in Spring at Pollok Park Glasgow
Mossy discs of cut trees stacked on top of each other in woodland.
Aerial view of the discs of a tree that has been cut and laid out in rows of four on the ground that is covered in leaves and earth.
Bright green leaves, ferns and foliage in woodland.
Close up of leaf of a fern growing in woodland.
Maiden head fern, tall stems with culry heads, growing in bluebell wood.
Cluster of bluebells
Orange and white blossoms.
White blossom tree and cherry blossom tree by pond in Maxwell Park Glasgow.
Close up of cherry blossom tree against pale blue sky
Street scene in Pollokshields Glasgow. Cherry Blossoms line a quiet residential street with view of Church with spire a clock and Campsie Hills in the distance.
Woodland clearing with fallen tree lying across bluebells with dense trees in background.
Very tall and narrow trees in dense woodland in Spring sunshine.
Close up of cluster of leaves photgraphed from below.
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Dark silhouette of twisty tree with intricate network of branches against a grey blue sky.
Close up of bush or plant with long thin stems and closed lime green yellow heads.

All images above courtesy of Lotte Gertz

This short film from the Van Gogh Museum explores the common ground between Vincent Van Gogh and David Hockney who both study nature and the landscape in their paintings.


" Hockney: ‘His paintings are full of movement. What people love about Van Gogh’s paintings is that all the brush marks are visible and you can see how they are painted. When you’re drawing one blade of grass you’re looking and then you see more. And then you see the other blades of grass and you’re always seeing more. Well, that’s exciting to me and it was exciting to Van Gogh. I mean, he saw very clearly’.

‘The world is colourful. It is beautiful, I think. Nature is great. Van Gogh worshipped nature. He might have been miserable, but that doesn’t show in his work. There are always things that will try to pull you down. But we should be joyful in looking at the world’. - David Hockney"

Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh drawing of the Garden of St Paul's Hospital at St Remy.

Vincent van Gogh, A Corner of the Garden of St Paul's Hospital at St Rémy, 1889.  Tate Archive Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unreported) License. 

Van Gogh's The Flowering Orchard. Bright greens and rusty orange field with orchard trees and a rake in the foreground.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Flowering Orchard, 1888, Original from the MET Museum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel. Public Domain

Van Gogh's painting Orchard Bordered by Cypresses.

Orchard Bordered by Cypresses (1888) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from the Yale University Art Gallery. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Pencil and watercolour sketch of men sweeping a road lined by leafless trees.

Road in Etten (1881) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from the MET Museum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Van Gogh's ink drawing of Pollard Birches in winter.

Tetards (Pollards) (1884) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from the Art Institute of Chicago. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Van Gogh's painting of Olive Trees. Orange, magenta and gold fields with green trees against a pale blue and pale golden ochre sky.

Olive Trees (1889) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from the MET Museum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

FORMS FOUND IN NATURE

Plant Macro Photography by Karl Bossfeldt

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

" Incredible plant photographs capturing the sensual beauty of nature from Urformen der Kunst (Archetypes of Art) (1928) by Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932). Blossfeldt was known for his technical mastery of macrophotography where he magnified the alien beauty of nature through his close-up portraits of plants, twigs, leaves, and seeds. Although he was a lecturer at the School of the Royal Museum of Arts and Crafts, Blossfeldt was never formally trained as a photographer. Blossfeldt used homemade camera and lenses to magnify his subjects up to 30 times their natural size. This resulted in sharp-focus realism, extreme clarity, and rigid compositions that look surprisingly avant-garde."

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