Joeseph Walsh
Affiliation: Lecturer in Fine Art with Psychology, Worcester University
Joseph Walsh is an artist rooted in forging human-nature connections through his work with plants and learning through the upkeep of a plot of land in a wildlife community garden. He uses drawing, painting and film, informed by research into wide-ranging plant healing traditions and eco-theory, to actualise a co-existing with nature.
He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths University, and has delivered courses and workshops at the Berlin Art Institute, Beaconsfield Gallery, Jamyang Buddhist Centre and IMT Gallery, London, as well as sharing insights with art students at Goldsmiths and Reading Universities
Panel: Plants and Places
I teach on the Fine Art with Psychology course at Worcester University, and have been exploring experiential activities outside in nature with my students - such as direct observational drawing and silent walks, to develop a socially engaged project around the benefits of nature connection. My course also brings to awareness the effects of digital screen devices eroding attention as an urgent societal issue to address.
For this presentation, I will show some of my direct observational drawing; discuss the influence of the polymath Goethe and how through direct sensorial observation and imagination, we can attune to processes in nature, forming a relationality.
I have been attending The School of Intuitive Herbalism, and it has trained me in meditation, visualisation skills and being with nature.
I will share how, in the wildlife community garden context, such approaches have sensitised me to inter-relations of woodland, hedgerow, meadow and wildlife.
I will then discuss how, when students have engaged in similar exercises, some have reflected on being in a co-creation with what they are observing, using terms such as ‘non-doing‘ and ‘effortless attention‘.
The insights I would like to speak about, explore art making processes that teach an art of living, and an expansive and therapeutic alternative to living in the dominance of the digital screen.