Glider

This of course begs the question what then is the best inspiration for a bonsai, outstanding existing bonsai or trees in the wild? I would say both, but neither alone is sufficient.

To use existing bonsai as inspiration puts one in the ‘bonsai schema’ trap in which one begins to form rigid preconceptions of what constitutes a ‘good bonsai’. Whilst an outstanding bonsai is a distillation of the most rewarding characteristics of trees in nature, to use such bonsai solely as one’s inspiration would lead to copies of copies of copies. Each may be a more ‘pure’ distillation of the rewarding characteristics of the bonsai preceding it, but each would also be one step further removed from the reality of ‘a tree’. It wouldn’t be long before bonsai lost completely their ‘tree-ness’.

To use only trees in nature as one’s inspiration means reinventing the wheel over and over again. To produce in a pot a miniature replica of a natural tree would provide very little reward. It would appear to be completely out of proportion because much of what impresses us about large trees in the wild is down to tricks of perspective. It would (generally speaking) have a relatively thin, parallel trunk with little or no movement. It would present a solid wall of foliage that obscured any view of its structure. It would contain all those elements that ‘jar’ the eyes; crossing branches, branches pointing at the eyes of the viewer and so-on. Due to its small size, it would be a dilution, rather than a distillation, of the most rewarding characteristics of a tree in nature.

There are exceptional trees to be found in nature, but for those of us who do not have access to vertical mountains and cliffs and wild, ancient, weather battered places supporting wild, ancient weather battered juniper and pine, our inspiration would have to come from more mundane sources; fields forests and hedgerows.

We would have to learn from scratch how to represent in miniature through illusion and manipulation, those characteristics that we find most rewarding about trees in nature. Why bother when generations before us have already done so?

However, a combination of existing bonsai and natural trees as inspiration works well in my opinion. Natural trees can provide novel inspiration that is in sympathy with the tree schemata we have developed as individuals (shaped by our individual environments and experiences), but existing good bonsai provide real life examples of how ‘rules’ and techniques are applied in order to represent our inspiration best. That is, how best to fool the eyes of a viewer into perceiving a large and mature/aged tree and the suggestion of its immediate surroundings, and to ensure that what is perceived is rewarding. Ultimately, as I say, it’s all down to reward.



NB The degree to which the views presented here are representative of the actual views of the author is inversely related to the degree to which they are likely to get him into trouble.

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Experience is knowledge gained immediately after it was needed.