What Art is to Me

Now that you know my intentions with this blog, let me tell you a little about myself.  I have a degree in art from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.  My degree is in painting and photography, of course, my two passions.  I currently live in Kansas with my husband and my son.  I hope that information about myself can help you understand why I have started this blog and that I do know a little something about what I am talking about.

Today, I want to talk about my favorite artist and his influence on me and hopefully your art as well.  As a child I fell in love with Impressionism.  Its beautiful and the movement and colors created a fantastic dream world I can live in.  What is impressionism?  It is a style and movement that art took after artists wanted to show movement in artwork to make it feel like the world was still moving even when it was captured in a painting.  The world is constantly moving, growing, and changing so why not capture that in a moment, in a painting.  So with that of course my favorite artist is Claude Monet.  His paintings appealed to me as a child and still do to this day.  Anytime I visit a museum that has one of his paintings I get butterflies as I study the work with intensity.  I grew up just outside of Houston, Texas so I visited the art museums there on a regular basis.  There is a Claude Monet painting there that he painted in his later years that defines art to me.

The Japanese Footbridge, 1912-15 Claude Monet

You are probably thinking, that is not the footbridge I know of...well your right.  This version he painted later in his life when his eyesight was failing.  Monet had an eye condition that made everything have a red hue to it.  Why I find this version the most fascinating is we are truly seeing through his eyes.  We are seeing the world as he saw it, red.  THAT is what art is to me.  Showing the viewer the world through the artist's eyes.  So let me show you my world through my eyes.