Art, permaculture, community, and health

I've been trying to find words to share this feeling I've had growing inside me for years.  That art is more important than it first appears.  Little moments of creating beauty like tending to a flower garden or more time consuming acts of art, like painting a picture or two of a favourite goose.

I know from my own journey that the act of art does wonders for individual human health.  It ties into the mindfulness and therapist goal for calming what they call the Lizzard Brain.  Our fight or flight and autonomic nervous system.  Calming these systems, gives our bodies room for the natural healing systems to activate.

And there is art and community. A shared aesthetic.  We can identify steam punk, modern goth, cottagecore, impressionism, and deco, at a glance.  The style or movements in art reflects a greater value set and amplifies it.  

I wonder what permaculture aesthetic would be like so it could be just as easily recognized at a glance by an outsider.  Cob construction, polyculture, and healthy harvest are already part of permaculture-core.  

And then there is community in the feeling I get when I see a project like these handmade watercolours.  The thrill I get seeing someone else do what I secretly dream but didn't know where to start.  Watching troubleshooting and that someone has the courage to share not just the amazing results, but also the process, problem solving,  and there is something else there that feels so unique to permaculture.  

I don't know the words for it.  It's like admitting to vulnerability by not being perfect on the first try, and making what others might think of as a weakness, into a strength.

Humans are story tellers and the most boring story in the world is "hero wanted a thing, they got the thing without any trouble, it was super easy, the end.".  Problem solving makes good story telling and we can connect with the protagonist when they struggle.

Where was I going?

As I learn more about myself and where I fit in this world, art keeps tapping me on the shoulder and trying to share that it's more than pretty pictures hanging on the wall.  

And I wish I knew pretty words to share how important this feeling is.

All I can think of are these 1,000 words:

American Gothic

Hi r. Probably I have my thoughts on 'the art of permaculture' too.
For me the aesthetics of permaculture can be described as 'natural'. A permaculture garden looks like a (very pleasing) part of nature, in which edible plants grow and other plants 'giving a yield'. It has natural shapes and, like in nature, all kinds of plants grow together in polycultures.
The (fine) art I like most has natural shapes too. Those can be non-figurative organic shapes, or representations of nature (landscapes, flowers, animals). But I can not always call this art 'permaculture', because the materials used are not natural.

When I made a permaculture design (for my PDC) I did it with re-used materials: I cut out shapes from old magazines to make a collage. Making use of 'what's already there' is one of the principles of permaculture, so I think a collage of recycled materials could count as 'permaculture art'.

Yes, there are watercolours made of pure natural ingredients, but I don't have experience with these. Probably some mineral pigments are very good for watercolours, but many plant dyes are not light-fast.

I was about 11 and living in the South of France. I was happy there, away from all adult troubles, and experiencing a bigger degree of freedom. There were a lot of woods; scrubby oaks mostly. It was in La Crau, half way between Marseilles and St. Tropez; a dry area, crisscrossed by "roubines" [canals that were dug to irrigate the fields of orange trees and apricot trees].  Wild grapes dark red to black, small but very sweet, even though there were lots of pips in relationship to the pulp.
As I went deeper in the woods, I came suddenly to a place that looked very different. It was about the size of a room, with bright green moss on the floor. The scrubby oaks gave me shade in that heat. Not a blade of grass, but all that beautiful bright green moss and I was totally surrounded by scrubby oaks.
Now, I'm more of a no-nonsense kind of girl, and not really sentimental. I can butcher chickens and shoot and skin deer without skipping a beat. But I just sat on the moss, eating my handful of wild grapes and I was moved to tears by the beauty, the serenity this little room. It felt like it had been created just for me.
I have often thought about this beautiful wild room in the years since, and when something goes wrong in my life, I think about it and regain some serenity. The area was wild, not cultivated by anyone, and yet I feel that I would like to reproduce this beautiful, wild "room" [if I wasn't living in Central Wisconsin zone 4b!]
That was nature's art, and when I think of permaculture, I would love to create 'rooms' like this.