Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy isn’t a book about landscape painting. It’s about art, myth, and beauty being born out of suffering. He explores how Greek tragedy, or 'drama' as we know it today, came into being. To be honest, it’s the first Nietzsche book I’ve read, and I found it tough going. I didn’t understand half of it at first. I had to trawl through Wikipedia and read commentary just to get an idea on what Greek tragedy even meant. But something about it stuck.
Nietzsche writes at length about two creative forces: Apollo, the god of order, clarity, and form, and Dionysus, the god of chaos, ecstasy, and feeling.
As a landscape painter who paints outside, I’ve seen that tension play out every time I set up my easel, which is why I think the book left such an impression on me.
There’s the Apollonian side: that instinct to plan, to compose, to build a painting with care and clarity. Someone like Eugene von Guérard comes to mind — Australia’s great colonial painter. His landscapes are majestic, built from studies and sketches, with every inch considered. They’re intelligent, structured, elevated. Nature, through his eyes, is something to be tamed and dignified with discipline. Pure Apollo.
Then there’s Dionysus.
When I paint en plein air, I sometimes get pulled into a space where I don’t really know what I’m doing, I just follow it. Swept up in light, movement, and instinct. I didn’t know these forces had names until I came across them in The Birth of Tragedy, I just thought that’s how painting felt.
These paintings can be abstract, loose, emotional. Some barely hold together. But sometimes they touch something honest, something beyond words. It’s not logical. It’s not perfect. But it’s alive. That’s Dionysus.
Nietzsche says true art, tragic art, happens when those two forces collide. When form pushes up against feeling. When clarity and chaos both show up on the same canvas. I believe that’s what landscape painting, at its deepest, does.
We’re not just copying what’s out there, we’re responding to it. Sometimes with reverence. Sometimes with abandon. The longer I do this, the more I realize the “landscape” I’m painting isn’t just what's out there. It’s memory, longing, fear, love. Nature stirs all of that up.
The Apollonian landscape says, “This is how the world looks.” The Dionysian one shouts, “This is how it feels.”
And both are true. Both matter. Maybe the real task isn’t choosing between them, but learning to hold them both, to stand in that tension, brush in hand, and let the collision happen.
1 comment
Very inspiring, your dedication and talent and understanding of art is outstanding.