☰ Jonathan Thomson Art

Plants and Animals

First came the cart, and then the horse. People first domesticated the horse more than 10,000 years ago and since then the fates of horse and human have been inextricably linked. When we learned to harness the horse and to ride our lives were transformed. This long association, when combined with the physical attributes of the horse, chiefly swiftness and strength, and their distinctive personalities, gave rise to a rich vein of symbolic association and myth-making, folklore and poetry. Their bodies, in action or at rest, have a very strong connection to our own.

Flowers too have many symbolic meanings. My flower sculptures reflect my interest in elusive forms, transience, ephemera and fragility as fundamental components of beauty and as representative of the joys and sorrows of life and love. Beauty is relative to different times and different cultures and all too often the delight it gives us is tempered by the fact that it too, like laughter and music, the perfume of flowers and the bloom of youth, will fade. All things must pass, but in our hearts and minds, that which we find beautiful is a joy forever.