Astonishing Nature
Nature is an event that never stops.
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
– Pablo Neruda
Nature is not a resource, it is a mentor.
Now all art is an imitation of nature.
Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium (Classics S.)
Tell them what nature has made necessary and what she has made superfluous. Tell them how simple are the laws she has laid down, and how straightforward and enjoyable life is for those who follow them and how confused and disagreeable it is for others who put more trust in popular ideas than they do in nature.
Seneca • Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium (Classics S.)
According to Batteux (1713–1780), art consists in imitating the beauty of nature, its aim being enjoyment.
What Is Art? - III
With reference to the manifestations of beauty, Baumgarten considers that the highest embodiment of beauty is seen by us in nature, and he therefore thinks that the highest aim of art is to copy nature.