Slow Looking

This is a jewel of a book: an invitation for us to practise the essential art of looking, of slowing down. An animate celebration of nature and the myriad ways we have interpreted it across history. - Edmund De Waal

The only way to see something is to look more slowly. That's what this book is showing us how to do. - Jeanette Winterson

Olivia Meehan has gathered together an intoxicating world of images. Her book awakens the ecstatic potential in the encounter and contemplation of both nature and art. - Sophie Fiennes

This beautiful collection of artworks and equally moving essays is the ideal guide for anyone wanting to adopt the ethos of slow looking - a practice perfectly suited to viewing and experiencing art in nature. It will be a constant on my bookshelf, and I have no doubt I shall be regularly reaching for it. - Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate

Slow Looking: The Art of Nature is a unique celebration of the relationship between art and nature across millennia. Eschewing a linear narrative of art, this inspirational collection of global artworks allows readers to make connections between the nature that surrounds them and the vision of a dazzling wide range of artists. Readers will encounter motifs, colours and subjects that have mesmerised artists - and viewers - throughout history. In the process, readers will develop their own understanding of how they see the natural world.

Art historian Olivia Meehan has mixed paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles and decorative arts from across the entire period of human creation and territory - Europe, Asia, North and South America, Australia and Africa - in thought-provoking juxtapositions. On every page, the reader is invited to find something new in a familiar landscape and to experiment in the observation of nature's wonders.

Exploring the various intersections between artistic techniques and thematical elements across land, water and sky, the pages reveal the deep-rooted connections between human beings and our natural world: the form and colours of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of a shell echo a carved fossil from 500,000-300,000 BCE; Van Gogh's olive trees (1889) are juxtaposed with ancient Egyptian carved limestone dated between 1353-1323 BCE; and while waterlilies captivated Claude Monet, their allure also travelled as far as Japan to Kawase Hasui (1929) and to mid-18th century India in Hunhar II's watercolour work.

Following nature's patterns, Slow Looking: The Art of Nature takes readers on a 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.

Series description:

The Slow Looking series tells the story of art through humanity's most powerful themes, offering a contemporary reshaping of art history as we know it. The next title in the series is The Art of Home.