Creative progress

Thinking about the prompt to explore high key images I returned to Claude Monet. My memory went back to 2024 when I visited his home and gardens in Giverny. I have had a lovely week looking at photos and recalling memories of that day. I've also looked at a couple of oil painting by Monet that I think are good examples of high key paintings.

Visiting Monet’s Garden at Giverny

My starting point is Claude Monet’s Gardens at Giverny - the Water Garden and the Clos Normand. Both gardens have been described as living canvases. They are places where it is easy to lose yourself in time and space.

Monet called the Water Garden a paysage d’eau (waterscape). Unable to see the horizon due to the bamboo, willow and poplars the water, natural light and the design of the planting create an illusion that flattens depth and merges water and sky. The pond acts as a mirror reflecting the sky, clouds, trees and plants. The constantly changing light disrupts what is seen and experienced.

The Clos Normand (Normandy enclosure) was designed by Monet to be structured around colour, light and perspective.  It is a living painting filled with climbing roses, arches, and overlapping layers of flowering plants. Monet designed different colour palettes for each season of the year as he intended it to be a place where he could paint en plein air. He designed the planting in such a way to capture the changing daily light conditions. The garden combines rectangular densely planted beds of colours nicknamed “the paintboxes”. Rare plants and wildflowers co-exist on multiple levels filling Monet’s field of vision for him to paint.

26^th June 2024 was a scorching hot summers day when I visited Monet’s house and gardens at Giverny. The Water Garden was an immersive experience that began as I crossed over the green Japanese bridge and began to follow the long winding path around the pond. The sun shined upon the flat water which was like a liquid mirror. The reflection of bright blue sky and the willows and poplar trees appeared in the water alongside the water lily leaves and flowers. The banks were densely planted with grasses and flowering plants with blue, white, pink, purple and orange flowers.

In comparison the Clos Normand was a spectacle of sunlight and brightly coloured flowers. Againt the clear blue sky pink roses hung down from iron archways over the paths. Below them the beds displayed multi-layered plants and flowers of both complementary and harmonious ‘sun-bleached’ pink, purple, green, orange and gold. Different layers, textures, and heights of plants added to the beauty of the scene.