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Writer's pictureJonathan Oakes

Naturally Influenced

Updated: Apr 25, 2022


Art4oka.com is about introducing my artworks to some of the world, and so I will try introduce most of the aspects of my painting and drawing and the influences of my creativity.

I have mentioned in previous posts and on the "inspirations" page of art4oka.com that one of my main influences and or inspirations is the natural world. A quite vague statement that covers a lot of "ground". I simply mean that being outside in wild(ish) places has a profound effect on me and I am sure it does on others too. Trying to capture that whole feeling in an artwork (painting, drawing, photograph or even film) is very difficult indeed, if not impossible.

This natural outdoorsy experience can only be hinted at, with the viewer attaching their own experience to the artwork. I delve into this subject in a bit more in depth in a forthcoming post.


In the art I created in the years before my university days and also to a degree afterwards I used natural objects to influence the artworks, not in a still life or landscape way. I took the texture and colour and forms of gnarly old trees I came across in ancient un-managed Oak and Beech forests, sometimes bringing home severed boughs and rotting stumps to study further. I was also influenced by the somewhat grotesque anatomical plates of the seventeenth century artist Pietro da Cortona.


Many of my earlier drawings and paintings have flowered from these seeds of inspiration. One painting was titled "meat eaters leave the mountains" 250 cm wide x 200 cm high on paper very difficult to display and has become somewhat gnarled itself after being rolled and transported many times. Other artworks are "dog jug" (below) and "shelter" (soon to be uploaded to art4oka.com.)


dog jug


pen on paper


Animal Draw Gallery


Inspired by the stump of

a Beech tree that was stripped

of bark to reveal the smoothness.



Gnarled old tree

The exact location

of this tree? Please

use "what 3 words"

spice rises wants


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