Exploring Inner Emotional Landscapes Through Symbolic Nature-Inspired Abstract Art

Charlotte Wensley
Dec 13, 2025
7 min read

I've been creating symbolic nature-inspired abstract art for many years, employing visual notions of landscape as a metaphor for spiritual space and as a means to describe my feelings of connectedness to people, places and experiences.

Colorful abstract painting with geometric shapes and plant motifs on a cluttered art table. Bright pink, orange, and blue tones dominate.

My references to landscape are sometimes quite literal in terms of a desire to evoke a particular environment or place and sometimes these references are more about the spatial relationships between elements and the way these tell stories about human experience.

Colour is always a major part of my storytelling too, evoking different emotional tones, moods, energies and atmospheres.

Hue is intrinsically linked to the abstract shapes, forms and details in my painting work.

| Reductionist Landscapes Imbued with Symbolic Elements

As I work on my current paintings, which are being given time and space to evolve slowly and consciously, interspersed with other creative side projects (see my lino printing), I've realised I've embarked on a creative pathway that I feel is leading me towards less visually complex and more reductionist landscapes, though my current symbolic references remain very literal at this stage.

I am so enjoying my eucalypt and banksia leaf shapes at the moment, but not just because they are, to me, the loveliest of shapes, but there is already a story emerging for me about my commitment to their ongoing inclusion in my paintings and the fact that they are holding my focus in other explorations - such as drawings and prints.

This is kind of unheard of for me - my brain tends to bounce along from one thing to the next without pausing for too long on any one thing, always excited and ready to be moving along (I have been nicknamed 'The Energiser Bunny' in the not too distant past!).

But here I am sitting with these organic shapes.

And, subconsciously at first and now more consciously with 8 works in progress underway, I find I'm limiting my colour palette further in these new pieces.

So, naturally I'm wondering what it is about these shapes and restricted palettes that is captivating me so strongly and allowing a new feeling of creative potential and longevity to emerge.

And to give my thoughts some context I've been taking a look at other artists for whom organic motifs are highly symbolic, and an important element in their abstract painting work.

| Flowers Are The Ultimate Symbols

From the 1920's to the 1940's American artist Georgia O'Keefe painted many abstract works with organic floral forms acting as metaphors for emotion, inner life, and sensuality.

She once said, “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way—things I had no words for."

White flower with green center and leaves against a soft blue background. The painting has smooth, flowing lines and an elegant, serene mood. — *Jimson Weed White Flower 1* by Georgia O'Keefe

O'Keefe found, in floral and organic forms, something incredibly profound; that these were symbols that sat at the very edge of human comprehension. She saw flowers as portals into emotional truth, carriers of memory, metaphors for desire, fragility, resilience, and the shifting inner landscapes that shaped her life.

Like many artists before and after her, we can similarly explore the layers of meaning held within soft petals, complex blooms and foliage, and witness their quiet, universal presence.

These organic references can offer us a way to explore and describe what it means to feel, to grow, and to understand oneself in relation to the world and feel ultimately connected to nature both in the world around us and our own innate human nature and how we process experience.

| The Interplay of Nature and People

The integration of floral patterns in the iconic works of Gustav Klimt created visually rich surfaces that melded figures with their surroundings, blurring the line between the subject and the background.

HIs use of floral designs was heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau movement, which embraced natural forms and flowing lines. The decorative florals in his work added layers of symbolism and aesthetic complexity, enhancing the emotional resonance of his paintings.

Two figures embrace, draped in patterned gold, amidst a floral field. The background is golden and textured, exuding a romantic mood. — *The Kiss (1908)*

In Klimt’s compositions, flowers often served as extensions of the human figures, symbolizing themes such as love, fertility, and the cycles of life.

The seamless integration of floral patterns with the human form suggests a profound connection between people and nature. This interplay creates a harmonious and immersive visual experience, inviting viewers to explore the depths of emotion and meaning within the artwork.

| Evoking the Spirit of Landscape Through Gestural Forms

Canadian artist Ilana Manolson describes herself as moving between the edge of representation and abstraction, capturing the essence of landscape in a mark. Her paintings refer to both the seen and imagined.

" Every painting is a story formed by a compilation of miles walked through the past and into the present."

Abstract art with white flowers and yellow leaves. Blue swirl and gray textured background. Hints of red, creating a dynamic, serene mood. — Season of Seeds (2018)

Her work speaks to an awareness of nature’s temporality, portraying the dynamism of growth and erosion. She has an ability to evoke a landscape’s spirit through gestural forms and nuanced tonal palettes, creating spaces that feel lived in and deeply personal.

It seems to me that there is a kind of twilight zone where some artists find themselves either working alternately or suspended between non-representational painting and a more pure form of abstraction.

Many artist seem exist and work in this transitional zone, demonstrating a desire to make their work feel expressive, gestural and often energetic through their use of colour, composition and mark making but with visual clues about landscape, that their viewer can relate to such as organic shapes and suggested horizon lines to create a feeling of visual depth.

| Sensory Perspectives Evoked through Symbolic Depictions

John Olsen, celebrated as one of Australia’s most prominent artists, forged a unique vision of Australia's spirit and character across a career spanning over seven decades.

His distinctive artistic language, characterized by dynamic lines and vivid colors, seamlessly merged representation with abstraction, offering a personal perspective of the world, rich with sensory experiences that oscillate between exuberance and profound contemplation.

His work is alive with the movement and energy of the Australian Landscape and expresses his deep, intuitive connection to it. His paintings pulse with a kind of visual rhythm—meandering lines, radiant colour, and organic forms that mirror the vitality of nature itself.

Rather than depicting the land literally, Olsen transforms it into a living organism through his symbol-filled canvases which deftly echo the patterns of rivers, the shimmer of wetlands, and the pulse of desert interiors, all intertwined with motifs of renewal, fertility, and the cyclical rhythms of life.

Abstract artwork with swirling lines and shapes in yellow, orange, and green. Complex patterns cover a beige background. Energetic mood. — Summer in the You Beaut Country (1962)

Through gestural mark-making and vibrant, sun-soaked palettes, Olsen expresses not just what the landscape looks like, but what it feels like—its vastness, its internal hum. His work becomes a poetic map of the Australian psyche, where place, energy, and imagination merge into a single expressive visual language.

| Composition Used Symbolically in Abstract Landscape

William Robinson’s landscapes are immersive, shifting worlds that invite the viewer into a spacious, multi-perspective experience of place. His paintings often bend and tilt the horizon, creating a sense of being enveloped by the terrain rather than simply looking at it.

This fluid perspective reflects Robinson’s deep, almost spiritual connection to the subtropical landscapes of Queensland—rainforest gullies, rolling hills, changing light, and the slow choreography of weather.

Symbolically, his work explores themes of time, transformation, and the quiet dignity of the natural world.

His use of fractured viewpoints can be read as a meditation on how we actually experience landscape: not as a single fixed moment, but as a tapestry of shifting sensations, memories, and emotional responses. In this way, Robinson’s landscapes become more than depictions of place—they become living, breathing reflections of the inner and outer worlds intertwined.

Williams himself describes his multiple-perspective works as an exploration of the different ways we experience and see the world that we are part of.

Surreal landscape with twisted tree trunks reaching up toward a blue sky with fish-shaped clouds. Stars visible in a dark blue area. — Panel 1, Four Seasons (1987)

| The Symbolic Spectrum

Through looking at this selection of paintings we begin to understand that the symbolism found in abstract nature-inspired landscape art exists on a spectrum.

This selection of works play with the depiction of objects and scenes from the natural world through varied approaches to colour, shape, visual texture, abstracted organic forms and composition, with some works leaning more towards realism and others embracing a non-representational style.

They all challenges us to look beyond the obvious and find meaning in the chosen symbols and abstract creative perspectives of the artist which are highly individual.

| Finding Shapes and Symbols

Printmaking workspace with multiple black floral prints on white paper. A colorful blue and red print lies on top. Various tools and supplies in the background. — Banksia leaf oil pastel drawings and lino prints

For us as artists, exploring symbolic nature-inspired landscape painting offers us freedom from traditional representational constraints. It encourages us to experiment with ways to describe our personal perspectives about the world and different ways to tell our stories; whilst using landscape as a visual vehicle to convey meaning.

Attaching symbolic meaning to elements in our work gives us a way to communicate the intangible aspects of human experience through our art. There are myriad ways to express these personal meanings; from pure abstraction to different twists on a range of art styles.

But for me, making work that has, at its heart, a connection to nature makes the most sense, experientially and emotionally, as much of my thinking about and processing of life events happens whilst out in nature.

And through the gathering of visual information about shape, both in the broader sense of landscape and in nature's details, I find I am constantly expanding and enriching my vocabulary of shapes and symbols which find their way into my work, becoming entwined with my personal perspective about the human experience.

| Final Thoughts

Colorful abstract painting on a table with floral patterns in purple, yellow, and teal hues. Art supplies like paint jars are scattered around. — Early layers of a work in progress painting.

My current work is evolving slowly and is being given plenty of resting time between alterations!

With several paintings on the go I am able to move between them all in a fluid way, and watch them unfold as a collection.

But I'm giving myself time and space also to continuing my little visual explorations in drawing and printing.

I'm learning something from these little tangents - but I'm not entirely sure what that is yet; all I know is, my connection to these landscape elements is deepening and becoming more symbolic.