Mother Nature is seriously up to something! She will not be daunted in bedecking her canvas in splendid array. Mother Nature is making art! I cannot experience this sweet season without thinking once again of those masterful French Impressionists and how beautifully they were inspired to tenderly and boldly celebrate the paradise that is spring. I yearn for their companionship—to share time and space with them—to hear and to see through their ears and eyes. |
For this sweet spring season, the artistic musical creations of Claude Debussy make him one of my favorite Impressionistic composers. As I close my eyes and begin my yogic salutations to the sun, beautiful images of springtime, made by the French Impressionist, Claude Monet, begin to flow through my awareness. Among the most influential composers of his era, (Achille) Claude Debussy was born 22 August 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. He died in Paris on 25 March 1918. Among his major works are Clair de lune (Moonlight), Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), La Mer (The Sea) and Printemps (Springtime). Debussy’s highly original system of harmony and musical structure expressed in many respects the ideals to which the Impressionist painters and writers of his time aspired. |
The painter Oscar-Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting. Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene over and over in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property. There he launched a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds and a Japanese bridge that would become the subjects of his best-known works. He began painting the water lilies in 1899, a series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously through all seasons for the next twenty years of his life. |
Or…put in your earbuds, plug them into your phone, tune to an Impressionist composer and step outside. Take a walk through the wonder of Mother Nature’s creation and know we are being remarkably blessed by the artistry of Mother’s Nature's spring in the making.