Khalil Gibran on Getting Grounded
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Khalil Gibran
Gibran's The Prophet is one of the best selling and most translated books of all time. In addition to its positive attitude toward humanity, there is a gentle but insistent provocation to reconnect with nature, directly and deeply.
Twenty years ago, the idea of “connecting with nature” seemed a quaint, old-fashioned notion to me. Sure we hung out on in Central Park when the weather was good, you know, to recharge; but all the best things in life were behind concrete walls (and increasingly, behind our little glowing internet portals).
Nowadays, connecting with nature seems much more like an urgent luxury. I scamper out of my office midday and desperately soak in some rays like some Fear and Loathing or Naked Lunch denizen deciding he should maybe have a glass of orange juice this week. There has been much written about this as a bigger social challenge in the past few decades, including labeling a deficiency of nature an actual disorder.
To this end, I have been taking time to get outside during the past few weeks, whenever weather allows. It has been a long winter for all of us in the northern hemisphere, and I am really looking to spring. We’ll see about bare feet. I know the earth would delight in it, but so do ticks and plantar warts so…See? There I go again, avoiding the outdoors. Time for a change of scenery!
Speaking of which, Nichole and I have been hard at work on a few additions to our website. I’ll be bringing this substack over to our domain, and we’ll be putting up more of our creative studio’s other projects, including but not limited to all of Nichole’s Paris photography, Paris in Color, The Paris Journal, a few client things and all of that good stuff.
I also have an idea for a new project that is not exactly illustrations based on classic literature. Do I dare, do I dare…disturb the uniform content strategy?
About the Art
“I responded to the quote’s personification of the wind and earth, so rather than centering on a person’s experience of the wind, I chose to capture the wind’s experience of a person. How does the wind “see” something? How does it caress someone it longs for? In our illustration, the wind dresses a human form in its movement, becoming a natural surrogate for clothing.”
Art by Evan Robertson. All rights reserved.