Capturing Nature Through Art...

All of the rain we have been receiving lately has made the view outside my window look more like something an Impressionist painter would capture rather than me with my camera. Just as the Impressionist Claude Monet used short, broken brushstrokes to barely convey forms, our locally heavy rain upon my window obscuring the landscape beyond, along with cloudy skies overhead, has achieved somewhat the same effect. The picture above was taken with my camera while the picture below shows an example of Impressionism.

While not a true Monet, the painting above was done by an artist influenced by Monet's painting called "Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies." Last year while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I visited an exhibit containing Monet's work and was taken with the beauty and vibrancy of it. Reading about Monet, I discovered that he tried to capture the light, color and atmosphere of the natural world into the pure expression of paint on canvas. Monet perceived his art as the result of his relationship with nature saying, "All I did was to look at what the universe showed me and I let my brush bear witness to it."

What pulls at us humans to capture the natural world through photography, painting, singing, writing or in many other forms? Maybe it is our disconnection from it, a desire to be more in relationship with it...