The wind blew hard the other day, shaking the leaves into a wild dance to the ground and rustling the usual placid surface of the pond. Light glimmered and waved and shone and I was entranced. Not much got done in the studio.
Hi Rosie, I'm not sure any of us can look at shimmering and not think Monet...do you know this poem
Monet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don't know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and changes our bones, skin, clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~ Lisel Mueller ~
(Sixty Years of American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets)
Thanks Charlton, there are waterlilies planted, out of these shots but I will probably do a post on them soon as the leaves have become an amazing colour.
I see Monet's waterlilies...
ReplyDeleteI do too Fiona!
DeleteNice. Very impressionist, Don
ReplyDeleteThanks Don!
DeleteThe top image looks like thread painting! All beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Connie, I love the shimmering.
DeleteLike Fiona I immediately thought 'Monet'! Evocative
ReplyDeleteHi Rosie, I'm not sure any of us can look at shimmering and not think Monet...do you know this poem
DeleteMonet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~ Lisel Mueller ~
(Sixty Years of American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets)
And me too - Monet was immediately in my mind - beautiful - perhaps you should plant some waterlilies?
ReplyDeleteThanks Charlton, there are waterlilies planted, out of these shots but I will probably do a post on them soon as the leaves have become an amazing colour.
DeleteLovely captures. I'm sure your studio work will have the benefit of your day observing this beauty.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Ravenna, It's been such a beautiful fall I just can't bear to be inside, and winter is long, hopefully things will balance out.
Delete