I AM NATURE - ARTIST EVA KURSETH IMER
Artist statement
As an artist and human being, I have always had a deep inner calling to see, understand and communicate. It has led me deep and far on my artistic journey, to develop and run a major art school and to many major exhibitions. With this inner drive, I also developed a deep understanding of soil and cultivation, and for nature and climate change. These two directions have been like two large rivers that over time have flowed together and become one. Today I use art to express the feelings I have for nature, that I am one with nature, that I am nature.
For a long time, I was very affected by the destruction of nature and climate change, engaged on social media, picked up plastic on beaches and did otherwise what I could. Today I see the devastation, I experience climate change, but an understanding has emerged that we humans need to identify with nature in a different way in order to be part of the changes, we need to get a deeper inner realization that we ourselves are vulnerable, that we ourselves are nature. That the damage we create on an external level also harms ourselves.
There is a vulnerability in transcending the notion of a distance between us and 'it' – nature, that 'it' should be something other than us, there is no such 'boundary' between us and what we call nature. We must recognize that the dualistic relationship between inner and outer reality is not real. We are all one, the same energy, the same breath and that makes us vulnerable.
My artistic work has therefore turned towards conveying the feeling I myself have of being in nature, being nature and nature's intrinsic value and beauty. My life today is a communion with nature, what is me, what I breathe, what shapes me, what is out there is the same as in there – it is me.
So my artistic work is a form of nature activism, I'm trying to convey a deeper realization of nature, an 'Iamnature'.
Alteration
As a visual artist I worked with large surfaces, large 'light planes', wide large brushes, light and colour was my world. It was an abstract world where I drew inspiration from my daily yoga and meditation.
The changes away from painting came partly with climate and environmental commitment, one thing was my large paintings with large amounts of plastic paint floating on the canvases, another and for me far worse thing was the school I had started where between 800 - 900 students a year learned to paint with acrylic on the palette. I myself got burnt out in several rounds and it ended up with the school being sold and I donated my 80 paintings to Oslo University Hospital and with that I ended my physical painting career and went into digital.
'Painting with light'
As an artist, the camera had always been something by the side, something I used to photograph paintings, document, something I did during holidays, - and I eventually spent a lot of my holidays walking in nature and photography. And nature took over for the canvases, - I found a language in I could use. My longing to be in nature could be reconciled with an artistic endeavor; lines, colours and surfaces in the water table, on rocks, plants and seaweed, mountains and forests, - everything I could use and I got closer to nature for every trip, for every work.
Out with the camera I am not concerned with finding the perfect subject, I wander and come to a 'place' where I think that here is 'something'. Then I start looking and then it's probably the visual artist in me who sees, I start 'looking' with the lens. It can take a long time, but then something happens - I find something that ignites an energy in me, something I recognize, something that wonders me, fascinates me. I get into flow, I see light, lines, colors, abstract compositions, something I can use as 'layers' in my images, colors that can add glow and depth to images. The deeper joy and connection I experience from being with nature, when it speaks to me, is indescribable. The landscape can be filled with compositions, stories, small cutouts, abstractions, materialities and colors I can use.
Back at home, the images load onto my computer and open Lightroom with my large Wacom screen. There, the images are processed and placed in catalogues with different themes. It is important to get to know the images and what possibilities may lie in them, so that when I start a new work, or develop several images within a theme, there is someone ambushed about what direction I take, what images to explore, where the possibilities are.
In order for the images to be ready for development, they must be post-processed. Then the image quality will improve and the images will be larger.
In the images I use sections of images to find compositional qualities and whole images in a mix, there are several layers of images one above the other that make up an image. I evoke lighting effects and colors instead of mixing light and colour in a traditional way, the layers are mixed in different blending modes, with different saturation and transparency.
Technical equipment
I have chosen my camera and my lens based on the fact that it should be a work tool that will give me room for creativity and play, without too much focus on technique. It will free me from painting and give me opportunities to use my visual competence in other ways.
Hence a Nikon D5500 with a Nikkor 18-300mm f/3.5-5.6 ED DX VR.
It's such a good camera and lens that almost no matter what I might do, or forget to do, I come home with photos I can use for my use.
As a monitor, I have chosen a pressure-sensitive Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 Touch.
I develop my images in Photoshop and some in Lightroom.