Artist Louise Bourgeois and Nature Imagery

Few artists can create sculpture that at once showcases nature imagery, betrays humanness and sensuality, and has a heavy artistic/conceptual weight. Louise Bourgeois was one of them. (Georgia O'Keeffe and Maya Lin also come to mind.) She died last week in New York City.

Some critics think (and I believe the artist herself once said) that her work was wholly personal--most of her sculptures were intended to convey a sense of protection against a harsh world outside one's self.

I've always seen a nurturing, playful side to her work, however undeniably introverted. And, what i construe as nature imagery--the giant spider, soft white grassish sculpture, sci fi coral reef-looking stuff--is more calming and wonder-inducing than anything else. It could be that the 'self' in these cases, that the artist wants to protect is the concept of ourselves undeniably embedded in the natural world.

I don't know about you, but the interconnectedness concept (ie how the scientific concept of energy flow ties all living and non-living matter together) always gives me a sense of invulnerability, or at least a lack of paranoia.