Nicola Moss: Listening to Nature

Nicola Moss’ layered landscape paintings celebrate the cross-cultural, cross-temporal power of the humble garden. Channeling heartfelt emotional and physical responses to greenspaces, the artist considers the power of plants in nurturing psychological wellbeing. Her works delve into environmental sustainability and ‘sustainism’, optimistically envisioning a world reshaped by harmony, connectedness and symbiosis.

‘Listening to Nature’ continues Moss’ fascination with gardens and greenspaces, exploring the primordial hold of nature on the human psyche. Bringing together vignettes from her home garden on the Gold Coast with ongoing experiences of Japanese gardens in Tokyo, the works probe how and why plants sustain us in a world where green is slowly being supplanted by grey. The trope of the garden is represented with vast possibility across these rural and urban spaces – as shade on a warm day, the solid grounding of rock, the lifeforce of water, manicured specimens on pedestals, the home of birdcall, the breath of trees, an unruly corner of a park. A calming cache of greens – from emerald and celadon to hues of moss, mint, fern and forest – summon a Zen-like space as Moss posits the garden as a wellspring that nourishes body and mind. This distinct palette, combined with Moss’ collaged shapes, recalls the aesthetics of camouflage and the crypsis of nature.

“Why do gardens appeal to me so much?” questions Moss, “Is it the folly of controlling nature? Is it simply the joy of being present with the wonder of life?” Her works orbit these questions with the contented acknowledgement that they will remain unanswered. A tranquil sense of observation stamps this series, whereby digging and doing have been replaced with viewing and listening. Moss spends much time gazing at her garden, absorbing the bounty of life that inhabits it and the surrounds – birds, insects, a lace monitor, wallabies and snakes. “Plants are my muse”, she shares, “I have been listening to the garden for twenty years, accumulating details and memories that signify seasonal change, diversity of life and my relationship with nature”. The artist’s gaze is evident in some works, peering outdoors from her studio, and we can feel Moss’ longing to dissolve into the places lovingly reconstructed with paper and paint. Her balanced constellation of plants, trees, water and rocks mingle in symbiosis like a community of friends.

Moss’ works boldly declare their own construction with crisp cut forms and abstract patterning embracing the whimsy and wonder of the natural world. Her process is an intuitive build, beginning with painting, staining, printing and frottaging Japanese paper before cutting and tearing into shapes. In this series Moss has worked with acrylic paint markers for the first time, drawing directly onto her painted papers. Moss then works intuitively, assembling her archive of coloured surfaces before slowly constructing each canvas. In some of the works, leaves adorn trees as if they have fallen gently from Moss’ hand, settling wherever they choose. There is the sense that although these works are tightly choreographed – much like the gardens themselves – they are subject to the whims of nature, of chance.

Vehemence and vitality inhabit these compositions, and it feels as though the plants are photosynthesising sunlight before our very eyes. Abstract luminescence emanates from within, a symbolic glow reminiscent of the reflective shimmer of a sun shower or the diamond shine of the ocean. Foreground and background solvate into each other as Moss creates pictorial slippages between moment and memory. This spatial and temporal spalling points to an intrinsic yet elusive experience of gardens, something that can be glimpsed only when you listen to nature.

Elli Walsh – Principle Writer, Artist Profile