Artists maintain a complex relationship with nature. Nature, while being the ultimate reflection beauty as intelligent design, is traditionally not considered art itself. It is only the source of inspiration and subject matter for art, which has long been held to be essentially a product of human creativity. Nature is the work of God while art is our own humble attempt to mimic divine creativity. There is thus a clear distinction between the nature and art, the passive object (reality) and the creative subject (artist).
 
From Plato to Andre Bazin, art was long thought to be essentially mimetic or imitative of nature. The artists have attempted to imitate nature in various ways, of course. Some aimed at trompe l’oell while others are more keen on abstraction or a desire to reveal the hidden geometry of the things in nature.  
 
The Enlightenment and Romanticist philosophers have thought that nature is more mysterious than it seems. There is so much that we do not know about it and probably never will (What Immanuel Kant calls the Noumenon is completely impenetrable to us). There seems to be an invisible force, a Spirit or Being that permeates nature and, being a part of it, the human unconscious…​