Bernard Bolter

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Nature vs Nurture

Nature vs Nurture

1994

Mixed media on canvas

12" x 16"

30.5cm x 40.6cm
Medium
Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions
/
30.5cm × 40.6cm
Scale
Medium
Year
1994
Series
OG Oil Paintings

BB-OGP-1994-005

Record fully catalogued via Art/Official

Last updated August 2026

About the work

A dark wooden cross stands center, planted on a curving, fisheye-distorted path, beneath a radiating sunset sky in bands of orange, rose, and pale yellow — the same vortex-sky device used in After Turner and Antiquity. To the left, a gray angular concrete block; to the right, an invented mass of trees and hills, imagined rather than observed. A small figure stands near the base of the cross, arms held behind the back, gaze out toward the horizon — a considered, deliberately still 'museum-viewer' stance rather than shielding or turning away. The composition stages the title directly: the gray block is the built, known world (nurture); the trees and hills are an idealized, Romantic 'nature' the artist never actually lived inside. The second description — 'a painting about the religion of romanticism' — names directly what emerged through dialogue: the cross, borrowed from Dalí as a generic symbol of belief rather than Christian faith, stands in for Romanticism itself as a belief system — nature worshipped not because it was known, but because it was needed.


Salvador Dalí — Cross as generic symbol of belief, drawn from Dalí's later-career religious/cross imagery — not a Christian reference for the artist, who was raised atheist. Caspar David Friedrich — Compositional device of a solitary, contemplative figure surveying a landscape larger than itself — consciously echoed, alongside independent reading of Rousseau.

Salvador Dalí · Salvador Dalí

Cross as generic symbol of belief, drawn from Dalí's later-career religious/cross imagery — not a Christian reference for the artist, who was raised atheist.

Caspar David Friedrich · Caspar David Friedrich

Compositional device of a solitary, contemplative figure surveying a landscape larger than itself — consciously echoed, alongside independent reading of Rousseau.

Vision Analysis

A dark, near-black wooden cross occupies the vertical center of the canvas, planted on a curving, fisheye-distorted ochre path. The sky behind it radiates outward in concentric bands of orange, rose, and pale yellow, cooling toward blue-gray at the top corners — a hand-painted vortex effect that reads as both sunset and halo, the bands echoing the cross's crossbar as if the light itself were emanating from it. A small figure stands near the base of the cross, rendered simply, arms held behind the back, posture upright and still rather than active — a contemplative stance, facing outward rather than toward the viewer or the cross itself. To the left, a hard-edged gray and white geometric wedge reads as a concrete or architectural block, sharply lit, its faceted planes contrasting with the loose, blended brushwork of the sky. To the right, a dense band of green trees and a tan rock or hill formation curves back into the distance, painted with more texture and less geometric precision than the block on the left — an invented, generalized landscape rather than a specific observed one. The ground itself is warm ochre and gold, reflecting the sky's palette and unifying the composition. The overall structure is symmetrical and axial: one dominant vertical form, flanked by two contrasting zones (hard architecture versus soft imagined nature), beneath a sky whose scale and radiating movement dwarfs the small human figure below.

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