When Limitation Becomes Illumination.

[blockquote source=”Georges Clemenceau”]”Then in a great sweeping glance, you would be dazzled by the perception of the miracle, the revelation of the prodigy.” [/blockquote]

One of my favorite paintings by French Impressionist, Claude Monet – entitled, Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond. It is just one of a series of 250 oil paintings, representing the gardens at his estate in Giverny.

Monet was transfixed by the movement of light within nature; and spent hours desperately trying to capture the fleeting moments of colors from dawn to dusk. To most, mornings were simply a transition into day. But, to Monet – the movement of clouds across the reflecting pond glimmered like fallen stardust.

It’s said, that Monet would set up a dozen canvases in a row – simply to capture nature’s fullest glory in one sweeping glance. Author Guy de Maupassant once said of Monet that he “was no longer a painter, in truth, but a hunter.”

Oh, that we might all learn to be ‘hunters’ of our very own truth.

“I wish I had been born blind,” Monet once reflected. “and then suddenly gained my sight so that I could begin to paint without knowing what the objects were that I could see before me.”

I’ve always marveled at how the artist created his best work while nearly blinded; having lost all attachment to the way in which things ‘ought’ to be.

And, serving as a testimony, indeed – that there are many ways in which we might finally see.

“I see much less well, I am half blind and deaf,” Monet complained. How ironic that his ‘limitations’ soon became the art world’s greatest gift.

When the panels were finally installed in the Orangerie of Tuleries, Paris on May 17, 1927, his dear friend George Clemenceau proclaimed,

“When the waterlilies carry us up from the liquid plane to the clouds, travelers in infinite space, we leave earth and its sky, even to enjoy fully the sublime harmony of things far beyond our little planetary world in the full flight of our emotions.”

Just as Beethoven utilized his ‘inner ear’ to compose the rich harmony of the Last String Quartets – Monet reached outside his darkened world to create the miracle of the Water Lilies.

That we might all learn to see in much the same way – in which these confines of limitation become a source of our own illumination.

About

Tara Lemieux is a mindful wanderer, and faithful stargazer. Although she often appears to be listening with great care, rest assured she is most certainly‘forever lost in thought. She is an ardent explorer and lover of finding things previously undiscovered or at the very least mostly not-uncovered.

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