As I worked in my Los Angeles studio over the Summer of 2020, I felt grateful to have the opportunity to paint and to be around art as it gives me a sense of calm.
An inspiration I think of is Claude Monet. Monet has always been one of my favorite artists. When I worked in Visitor's services at the MOMA in New York (my first job after college at Pratt) I loved to view the waterlilies panels which filled a small gallery room entirely by themselves. I went there every morning when the museum was empty except for us front desk employees and the guards. This lavender room was a place of peace, tranquility and reflection for me.
Monet's work inspires me still... especially in these days of the pandemic.
Monet wanted his works to have calming effects, claiming that he wished to create an ensemble of paintings of his water lily pond that would calm stressed-out viewers by offering them “an asylum of peaceful meditation”.
Monet painted much of the waterlilies series during World War I. Monet began the series in 1914, at 73 and worked into his 80's. He set up his easel beside his pond in Giverny and stayed put as World War I flared around him. Waterlilies opened the path to abstract painting. Monet and his contemporaries broke down barriers and persevered in their artistic quest against great hardship in order to achieve a freedom of expression that is now taken for granted.
Towards the end of his life, Monet's work increasingly reflected a form of abstraction through his simplification of composition, form and detail. By doing this and through his obliquely structured compositions with a focus on pure color and texture, Monet set a precedent for later artists, particularly those of the Post-impressionist, Expressionist and Abstract-expressionist movements.
These works are available, if you are interested, email me for prices.
deborahlanino@gmail.com
Acrylic on Canvas
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