Young Cape artists inspired by the grand scale of nature

Capetonians have a heightened awareness of nature due to living in a city dominated by a landmark mountain and a spectacular coastline.

It makes sense then, that young painters dedicated to representing the natural world in all its grandeur in the manner of the 18th century Romanticism movement hail from this city. Jake Aikman, Ruby Swinney and Sarah Biggs are among a group of Cape Town-based artists fixated with nature.

Aikman is known for his hyper-real seascapes, though his last solo exhibition, Haunt, also presented work dedicated to representing forests. In these works he turned to abstract painting on wood, inspired by a spell in Knysna where he weighed in on the sense of safety forests provide.

"I never got this feeling in the sea. You can't tame the sea. You don't ever feel secure in it," he observed, after years of bobbing in the ocean as a surfer. It was in this setting that he came to grips with his sense of vulnerability, or that of humankind in the natural world.

Sarah Biggs made this point in her first exhibition, Further Afield, via paintings with small human figures exploring vast natural settings. She draws attention to the scale of the territory and humankind's hubris in mapping and controlling it.

Unlike Aikman, in her rendering of nature she doesn't rely on realism. Instead, through her dreamy painterly mode, she recreates the sense of awe it provokes. This is reminiscent of the way natural phenomena were described by Romanticist artists before the turn of the last century. Her second solo exhibition, Waiting for Rain, due to open at Barnard at the end of this month, will see her further advance this painterly relationship and her preoccupation with nature.

As with Aikman, Biggs is drawn to capturing nature's beauty and wonder as a way of providing a space of discovery beyond the naked eye, the metaphysical, the psychic, but also the position of the self in a constantly shifting context. Nature is forever in flux and provides an attractive shorthand or metaphor, given that it draws people, induces contemplation while also offering a tactile or physical connection.

This is what interests Ruby Swinney too. In Ignius Fatuus, now showing at Whatiftheworld Gallery, she presents paintings where human subjects are transported to otherworldly spaces in natural settings. She evokes aliens and religious iconography in relaying this.

"When you go for a walk on a mountain or swim in the sea you feel like you have been transformed. I am not a religious person but there's this thing that happens that you can't pinpoint. I try to work that out through nature, in these suspended figures where they are brought out of their headspace," says Swinney.

Romanticism took hold during industrialisation and the age of Enlightenment and manifested in paintings of the natural world which resisted both scientific discovery and urban development. The movement has come full circle given its appeal in this post-industrialised era. Except now it may be global warming that's reigniting interest in and admiration for what the natural world offers human existence.

• This article was originally published in The Times.