Minnesota: Moose

May 22nd 2012

Occasionally I come across a painting or an image which affects me profoundly and which I have to keep going back to have another look.  I came across this painting in a gallery in Grand Marais. It is by a local artist called Liz Sivertson who was brought up on Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior. I think you can tell from her paintings that she has lived here all her life. She manages to convey an incredible sense of place in her art.

I keep wondering what it is about this particular painting that draws me again and again and I realised that the clue might be in the title ‘Symbiosis’.

A ‘symbiotic’ relationship is a relationship of mutuality between two different types of organism. The moose is so completely at one with its environment that the colours of the north woods merge into its flesh.  

The Moose does not do damage to the woods but rather contributes to them and in return the woods provide the moose with its sustenance. 

The woods and the moose grow together to create a sense of pure ‘life’ which radiates and affects everything else. It’s wonderfully lacking in cynicism and I absolutely love it. Bill Bryson in his book ‘ A Walk in the Woods’ describes the Moose as having   “A boundless lack of intelligence ..and antlers like oven gloves”.  Who couldn’t love such a creature?

I have noticed in the last week or two that the links between the things which I am drawn too have become clearer as I am less tired and stressed.

I am doing some reading about different types of psychotherapy, one of which is known as ‘Gestalt’.  Gestalt is a word which, in pure psychological terms, refers to the phenomena whereby the brain ‘ fills in the gaps’ in a picture to create a unified whole.In Gestalt therapy  ‘mindfulness’  (tuning in to our body language, gestures and feelings in the here and now) is placed alongside the understanding that we only exist fully within the complex web of relationships which make up our lives. The constant crossing of boundaries between ‘self’ (me) and ‘other’ (the world, our environment, our relationships) can become a treacherous place in which we can become too ‘fluid’ (not having enough sense of where we end and the world starts), or too ‘rigid’ (imposing unhelpful boundaries and barriers onto our relationships to feel safe). Learning to become aware of our present reality through our feelings and posture helps us to reconnect and renegotiate our lives to become more spontaneous and freer. To respond to life ‘in the moment’ rather than out of our history or the judgements of others.   This is a crude interpretation of something very complicated, but it is connected with the symbiotic moose. There are no false barriers between the moose and its environment. They are separate and yet intimately connected to one another. The moose is quite literally ‘in its element’ in the woods and is responding freely to, and is in harmony with, its environment. I have to say it doesn’t look too stressed, does it?

So today I am going to try to be more like a moose.

Go moose!