Cypress Trees

Our 2012 family calendar highlights this photo in the month of March. Having recently flipped to April, I've found I missed seeing this beautiful work. And upon looking back at older posts, I found I have never posted about it!

We saw this cypress painting, and several others, when we visited New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art last March. Even for a novice visual art appreciator, such as myself, I found Van Gogh's works stunning to see in person: the texture, colors and depth of the paint and the motion it creates! I especially love the grass green in bottom right side here. You can tell he flung his paintbrush aside and got right in there with his fingers to make it look just so. 

According to what I remember reading at the museum (so very reliable information here), this landscape was on the property of the asylum he was living at. I hope to create something so beautiful from the bounds of my own asylum. (Ah-ha! Verified here under the "Saint-Remy" subheading.)

Detail:

Anna and her art

This is our sister-in-law Anna.
I've heard she's in the Guinness Book of World Records under "nicest person on the planet". We love her. And her art; she's an artist. In fact, she's having her final show for her BFA degree in just 1 week. Go see it on BYU campus in the HFAC if you can.

Incredible painting of Ben's brother, Dave (her husband).

And if, like us, you can't attend :?( you'll just have to enjoy her paintings on her art blog.

Our cousin Nick. Her work is so amazing, yeah?

Congratulations Anna, the insanity is almost at an end!

Monet's Water Lilies

I keep thinking about this painting. We saw it while in New York City.

At first I didn't think much of it. I knew it was famous; my eighth grade English/Social Studies teacher Mrs. Zollner taught us a bit about impressionism. I specifically remember her talking about water lilies. I didn't really see what the big deal was. I'm not a big fan of light pastel colors, so I decided in eighth grade I didn't like Monet.

So seeing one hanging in the museum I thought, "Oh look, there's one of those water lilies I don't like." I wondered what people loved about it. I decided I had a few minutes to try and figure it out.

I read the caption, I looked close, I backed up and stared. I started thinking of myself painting a pond of water lilies. I looked at the water and realized how real it looked. I suddenly saw the floating phenomenon he captured with the lilies. I saw the layers of color on the water. I thought of him painting these for 30 years.

Something in me sparked. I suddenly felt very moved by this painting.

I think it was realizing when Monet saw his pond he saw something complex, beautiful, something he could see with new eyes and capture in new ways every day. He was not so familiar with it that he disregarded it. He also didn't seem to have the sense that he knew it perfectly. He kept discovering in himself a new perspective of a beloved thing.

I saw beauty in that. I also saw beauty in the painting itself. And maybe most of all I saw beauty in realizing that I can have new eyes to understand something, love something, if I stop and look a little longer.