Nature

My Mantis sculpture Nature was originally created as a humorous sketch of my mother as part of a series of abstract sculptural portraits that I made for my graduation exhibition at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. My mother had a difficult fate, but always kept a cheerful attitude, for which I admired her a lot. She grew up in a very conservative and strict Christian family, and even when she was living her own life within her own family, she did much of her life out of an inner sense of duty, and therefore often lived more for others than for herself. I remember, for example, that when I was about 15 years old, I no longer wanted to go to church on Sundays, whereupon she explained to me that one does not attend church mainly for oneself, but that church service is a service for God.

The fate of the praying mantis is to always sit in a praying posture. It has no choice, her posture is as it is – just as my mother thought she had to live her life in the duty to be there mainly only for others and thus serve God, just as her parents had taught her as a child. During her life, she often lacked the courage to break the self-imposed rules and regulations and let go. Her soul longed for freedom like a small caged bird, but she did not allow herself to fly out to be truly free.
Since she left this world, she is free from all judgement and according to her true nature full of love, compassion and humour. Whenever I think of her I can feel her loving presence and feel protected and carried by her as I did when I was a child.

Praying mantises reproduce only once in a lifetime and all adults die before winter, while the offspring hibernate in the larval stage. As with many other mantises, in the wild the male is eaten by the female during or after mating in between 13 and 28 per cent of cases. However, from an evolutionary point of view, it is now scientifically argued that it also makes sense for the male to be eaten by the female during mating. The clutch accounts for 30 to 50 percent of the female’s weight, and thus a heavier animal is able to produce significantly more eggs. The approximately 25 percent of males that are victims of sexual cannibalism thus contribute to producing more offspring of their own.

A few days after mating, the females lay 200 to 300 eggs in an egg package about 4 cm long, which protects the clutch by a rapidly hardening, foamy protein mass. In autumn, the adults die, while the eggs overwinter with the embryos in the egg packs, which are excellently insulated by their protective cover.

The larvae, about 6 mm long, hatch in May or June and pass through numerous larval stages until sexual maturity. They moult at least five times, larger females even more often, before the first adults appear in midsummer and late summer. About 14 days after the last moult, the animals become sexually mature.

Mantises were attributed supernatural powers by early civilizations, including Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Assyria. For me, the praying mantis is an elaborate symbol of nature in its beauty, but also in its apparent cruelty.
Nature in its overvelming beauty is probably the greatest source of inspiration for us artists. But nature also follows strict natural laws and therefore often appears to us as merciless and cruel when viewed from our subjective, human point of view. However, when we look at it more closely, it is not. It follows the laws of cause and effect.