{"id":8,"date":"2019-10-23T02:16:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T02:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/?p=8"},"modified":"2019-10-23T02:16:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T02:16:31","slug":"entry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/2019\/10\/23\/entry-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Entry 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The painting attempts to illustrate the Islamic concept and implications of God\u2019s presence in nature. This idea suggests that nature itself reveals God\u2019s presence, as aesthetic beauty, especially in nature, is importantly associated with God and with engagement with God. Immersion of oneself in nature, and interpretation of nature\u2019s beauty as examples of God\u2019s work, is represented by the floral theme of the piece. The flower, however, is abstracted by the alternating warm- and cold- color themes, demonstrating this notion that nature, although sensible in the objective sense, is also permeated with more obscure ideas, that is, with the mystical and the heavenly in the natural world. The flower as deducable, but abstracted, is thus meant to represent the coexistence of the otherworldly significance that is believed to be possessed by all things in nature, and yet, the perfectly distinct and comprehensible beauty which is obvious when one examines the natural world. In Islam, humans are able to identify, appreciate, and engage in the beauty of nature, and yet unable to completely understand the entirety of the hidden spiritual reality underlying all that there is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the painting, the sections which alternate between cool and warm in terms of color scheme are box-shaped. This is meant to illustrate the Islamic idea of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">natural laws<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> which govern the world as proof of Allah\u2019s divine creation of the world. Order, in Islam, then, is a sign of God, and humans can then examine nature as full of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">examples<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of God\u2019s work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/files\/2019\/10\/IMG_1231-300x235.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/files\/2019\/10\/IMG_1231-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/files\/2019\/10\/IMG_1231-768x602.jpg 768w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/files\/2019\/10\/IMG_1231-1024x803.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The painting attempts to illustrate the Islamic concept and implications of God\u2019s presence in nature. This idea suggests that nature itself reveals God\u2019s presence, as aesthetic beauty, especially in nature, is importantly associated with God and with engagement with God. Immersion of oneself in nature, and interpretation of nature\u2019s beauty as examples of God\u2019s work, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/creativeresponses\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}