Monet & waterlilies

For those of you who've read many of my posts, you know well enough by now that I might have a little bit of an obsession with light and how light alters everything it touches. Our perception of an object changes based purely on what kind of light is shining. Is it a bright sunny day, is there an unflattering fluorescent light, or is there the softness of flickering of candles? 

To me, I think no artist captures this concept of light more adeptly than Monet. My art history courses back in college were hand's down my favorite classes - I remember more of what was taught by those professors than by any others - and interestingly enough even though I use nothing of what I learned in those classes for my job, it's that knowledge I learned in those many classes that I've taken with me and feel incredibly lucky to have stored away in "my back pocket".  I can walk into many museums with at least a small, working knowledge of what I'm viewing and how the art fits in with the corresponding history, because art viewed in context of history elevates something that may be beautiful to something that has real meaning and purpose.

But, back to Monet. I've put together some of the photographs that I've taken at various museums I've been to where I've seen just a handful his many waterlilies. The thing about Monet - if you don't know - is that he was groundbreaking as an artist in his ability to analyze how light hits objects at various point in time - say the time of day or the time of year - and then being the artistic genius he was, he was able to portray what he saw by giving us his depiction of the scene. He helped act as a catalyst in the art world - gone would be the days where only literal portrayals of scenery or people were painted or drawn - with Monet and all of the Impressionists it was all about the depiction of light, color, movement, and most importantly perhaps, the human elements of emotion and perception.

Here are some of just a few of Monet's Waterlilies. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

can't you see the reflection
even though it
is not explicitly depicted?

an extreme close up
I love the colors so much -
it's a beautiful color combination,
isn't it?

don't you feel like you're
really standing on a
bridge looking out at the water?
this one is at
the Art Institute in Chicago

another extreme close-up
it looks muddled, but step back
and the magic appears

one of the largest of the Waterlily series that
I've seen - this one is probably about
60 feet long - Musee de l''Orangerie, Paris
AMAZING to see in person