Nature has always been a source of inspiration, and nowhere is that more evident than in the numerous works of art around the world that depict nature at its most captivating. Slow Looking: The Art of Nature explores a whole new way of thinking about art – inviting the viewer to contemplate artworks of land, water and sky for inspiration and to better understand the world around us.
Slow Looking: The Art of Nature takes readers on a meditative journey from fields, mountains, forest and glaciers to lakes, ponds, waterfalls and rivers and on to sunrises, rainbows, comets, clouds, constellations and so much more. This guided observation of nature offers a whole new way of contemplating the world – all through the medium of art.
Author Olivia Meehan shares her thoughts on the importance of connecting with nature as the seasons change, and why looking at art in a gallery is good for us.
Theodor Josef Petter, Alpine Flora, 1853. Oil on canvas, 89 x 72 cm. Courtesy of Belvedere Museum, Vienna. Taken over from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna
The winter months can be challenging for many people: not me. I relish the chill and the rain. But ahead of plummeting temperatures and as the daylight hours diminish, I think this may be one of the most difficult aspects of winter for many. Losing the light and adjusting to dark mornings and early evenings requires some serious adjustment. I’ve also noticed that we have generally developed a mindset of skipping seasons. Towards the end of summer, I hear people talking about winter.
Somehow our connection to spring and autumn are disappearing from the cultural imagination. There are many cultures that acknowledge the micro seasons that take place with each lunar cycle. In the autumn months, you notice squirrels briskly fixing to hibernate before the big winds take the remaining leaves from the trees. Hibernating is a natural response to the conditions of winter, and we have, like the squirrels, become quite good at arranging a cosy environment to weather the harsh months.
James Dickson Innes, Arenig, North Wales, 1913. Oil paint on plywood, 85.7 x 113.7 cm. Courtesy of Tate, London. Presented by Rowland Burdon-Muller 1928
For me, art can be a wonderful antidote to the winter blues and an escape from the everyday if you need it. Art can provide solace, inspiration, and hope in dark times. Landscape painting can be wonderfully transporting and even uplifting. Even if you are cooped up in the winter months, the art of nature can take you anywhere in the world.
And if we adopt the slow looking ethos, we can stretch those moments a little longer.
Slow looking is firstly about joy, but that joy comes from curiosity and focused observation, things that I have trained myself in as an art historian. In that professional capacity, I practice visual analysis on a daily basis, but on a personal day-to-day basis, it has also become second nature for me both to look up and outwards, and to spend extended time contemplating one thing at a time.
Ben Nicholson, July 15 1949 (St Ives harbour), 1949. Oil and pencil on canvas, 35.2 x 40.3 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon. Collection, New Haven. © Ben Nicholson. DACS/Copyright Agency, 2025
In truth, my slow looking practice started at a very early age – with movies. At home, we watched all the classics, independent films, French and Japanese film, and all the latest releases too, either at the cinema or on video. I became captivated by the visual components of film making, especially the cinematography, editing, colour grading, design, locations and sets. Storytelling, language and performance were also important to me, but it was the technicality of the visual world that seduced me. It was through these weekly film sessions at home that I fortuitously built a library of visual references.
In my first year at university, I enrolled in art history and cinema studies. We spent our first year studying the films of Alfred Hitchcock; those twice-weekly film screenings in the campus cinema were so thrilling! The discipline of watching a film from start to finish was excellent training for sitting still with a work of art, practicing patience and embracing ambiguity.
Joseph Wright of Derby, Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno, Italy, Moonlight, c. 1780–90. Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127 cm. Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Photo: Derby Museums
I think about it as an act of devotion towards the picture; to stay with it, and return to it, again and again. This practice of looking inevitably led to contemplating art in books, galleries and museums.
The ‘museums on prescription’ research initiative was one of the first to explore and measure the social and personal advantages of looking at art. In truth, it’s something you don’t need a doctor’s consultation for, or a scientific paper to rely on: as an art historian I would happily prescribe a spiritually restorative work of art in any of the free collections.
If you are in London, head to the Rothko Room at Tate Modern and try to time your visit from around 1pm, when a recording of Schubert’s String Quartet No.13 is played in the space. To be surrounded by Rothko’s monumental paintings is a truly breathtaking experience. Savour the experience by intentionally visiting one work of art (or set of works) and you might find it opens you up for other encounters, but make sure to relish the moment to focus and step away from the cycle of overabundance.
Anna Boberg, Northern Lights. Study from North Norway, c. 1901. Oil on canvas, 97 x 75 cm. Courtesy of The National Museum, Sweden
It is said we all benefit from being able to see a vista – especially for city-dwellers. It’s important to be able to see the clouds, see the horizon, get up high. So that expansive feeling I get from seeing paintings of the big vista, taking a big breath of fresh air, is very different from the tiny detail of a flower or a tree close-up.
In Slow Looking, arranging the images thematically is a good way to direct close looking: concentrating on one element brings it into focus. But I have also included works that may seem unexpected or surprising – they act as small visual interruptions, and this kind of interruption is very good for the brain. Curiously, these images often embrace a figurative element.
I find it fascinating how the visible inclusion or presence of the human immediately shifts our perspective. And that’s what slow looking is doing all the time – it’s just amazing that the longer you look, the more you see.
If the process of working on the book has revealed one thing, it is that although nature is universal, its representation in art is always influenced by culture, gender, politics, religious belief, and all of this is amplified across time. It is incredible to observe the vast range of technique, colour and form used by artists to render water, air, rocks, stars and other natural elements.
Gustav Klimt, The Park, c. 1910 or earlier. Oil on canvas, 110.4 x 110.4 cm. Courtesy of The Museum of Art, New York. Gertrud A. Mellon Fund
The work of art is part of a process, it is not always a final or absolute outcome, but rather it is a continuum of lived experience, tradition and innovation. In early European painting, the landscape is mostly idealised background to the human or religious action in the foreground. The Impressionists are using bold new brush strokes to give a view of a real place, painted en plein air. Australian First Nations artists depict, often in highly abstract ways, the real country to which they are deeply spiritually connected, and artists like Georgie O’Keeffe gets up very close and personal to individual plants and flowers.
There are just so many thousands of art works inspired by nature, and there are so many differences and diversity to be observed and experienced, in art as in nature itself. A few people have told me they are reading a few pages of the book each day, taking time to look carefully and savour just a few works at a time. I really love this idea; recognising that readers also bring their own unique reverence, and culture awareness to each page.
Words by Olivia Meehan.
Slow Looking: The Art of Nature is available now.
