Herman de Vries

Herman de Vries is one of the greatest living artists working with nature. 'My poetry is the world', he writes, and the aptness of this statement becomes more and more clear as you contemplate his extraordinary work. He offers no representation of landscape or of nature, of light, of air or of perspective. His aim is quite simply to present nature as itself. The intelligence that lies behind his work is subtle, ingenious, reflective and steeped in knowledge of both eastern and western philosophies. De Vries's early training as a botanist broadens his frame of reference still further.
De Vries's art springs from his conviction that a proper contemplation and experience of nature is essential to living in any meaningful sense, from a profound awareness of the present disjunction between people and their natural environment, and an intuitive certainty that the careful persuasion and prompts embodied in his work will nudge us in the right direction.
Here, the distinguished writer on art Mel Gooding contributes a critical overview of de Vries's work setting it in an art historical context and appraising it as an important reflection of the cultural consciousness of the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries.