One of our favorite artists is Claude Monet. Celebrated as the founder of Impressionism, Monet believed in painting the world as he truly saw it, rather than trying to create a photographic copy. Each human sees differently, and the Impressionists created works that were altered by changing color and light, their own eyesight, and their feelings about the scene they painted. Monet often painted the same subject over and over again, to examine how it looked entirely different each time given changes of season, weather, and time of day- some of his most well known subjects include haystacks in the field, the Rouen Cathedral, and the water lilies in his garden at Giverny. As Monet grew older, his eyesight began to fail; rather than give up painting, he took it as a new opportunity to record his changing impressions. Monet’s groundbreaking ideas about painting what you truly see rather than an idealized version of reality, his effortlessly elegant brushstrokes, and his dreamy use of color have inspired artists all over the world, and his timeless work still seems as fresh and true to life as the day his brush touched the canvas.
