Beatrice Mcmillan Link joy and destruction

my archive research started with a video called shores of Elie where a family takes a trip to the beach in 1935, the joy on their faces brings you into the immersive experience of being in nature and helps you imagine leaving the stresses of the modern world behind as you enjoy the different visual and sensory experiences that the natural world creates. for me this is a vital part of being human as the beach has always been an essential part of my life and the reason for my love of nature. However, after the influence of lectures and artist research, my focus changed to our destruction and appropriation of nature in response to its care for us and how we have a responsibility to protect it and show the earth the same amount of care it shows us. a lecture about place really got me thinking about the impact of the environment we show our work in and specifically what happened to nature when we take it out of its original environment. In the studio I set out to create a piece of work about the appropriation of nature, this turned out to also show the impact an unnatural environment has on plants as the drooping ephemeral nature of the leaves against the clean man-made background has a sombre, decaying presence. This also highlights the sentient energy and light that you lose as leaves and plants die. My next piece is an attempt to bring back that joy and life with colour, I am going to continue to explore this and question why we surround ourselves with nature and what this does to our modern-day environment.

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