In essence it is, or can be, a craft for those who simply want to put trees in pots. However as soon as someone decides to cut off a branch, pinch some foliage or do some wiring, just to make the tree look better in their eyes, it becomes art in that an item that looks one way is being manipulated to look another way based on the preference of the grower.

When it comes to reproducing nature we are really involved in a surrealistic adventure in making a small tree in a pot look like a large tree on a hill side viewed through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. In fact, a bonsai will never really look like a natural tree if you break down all of the elements and compare them. A bonsai at its best is a representation of a natural tree that invites the viewer, even if that viewer is only he or she that grew the tree, to fantasize a mature tree shrunk down and placed in a pot.

Simple reproduction is for lack of a better term likened to a photograph. Bonsai is more of an attempt to capture the essence and mood of a natural tree. The results are more surrealistic than realistic. A better way of looking at it might be to compare a musical composition. It is obvious that music cannot capture the image of water or a water fall, or a sea shore but some pretty clever composers have been able to capture the mood and feel and rhythm of such things with sounds and the like. The end result usually calls these type of things to mind. This is what bonsai should do. It is in this effort that bonsai becomes truly an art in that it is representing something that it is only organically related to.