waterlillies and iced chocolates

10am. nsw art gallery. jane, meg, emma, steph, ma. and monet.

was a really refreshing morning. the gallery was beautifully cool, and the light was really restful, as was the spaciousness.

i was quite struck by how these dabs of paint on a canvas endure on, hundreds of years after their composer has decayed into the earth. a mind perceived the world before it, and created their impression of it, and rather than the mind enduring it's the impression. what's more, is people spend hours pouring over the texture of each brushstroke - but spend barely any time amidst the creation it's attempting to capture.

i think renoir and monet are two of my favourite artists. i just love their emphasis on colour and the way they use it to render sensation, rather than illustration. i like that they're expressing the 'intensity of a single, unrepeatable moment', that it was 'no longer a question of fixing the things that abide, but of seizing what is passing' (Roger Marx).

Jules-Antoine Castagnary put it this way, and I think it captures exactly the power of the Impressionists: 'they are Impressionists in the sense that they render not the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape'.

[this reminds me: at the beach this evening, a similarity came to mind between this, and the feeling we tend to respond with when we know God is urging us to do something. it isn't so much a tangible voice, not even a thought often, but just kind of a reaction. it's as though God has said, 'let me take this from you', but the feeling is of our REACTION to that, the struggle whether to let Him take it, or to hold on stubbornly.]

i loved Renoit. there was this dreamlike quality to his earlier work. the longer strokes and soft edges evoked the sensation that i was there, looking at the scene, and had just unfocused my eyes. more so than realist paintings, because you admire the skill, rather than loose yourself in the moment it conveys. realist seems so stagnant, because it feels like there is little of the artist's mind expressed in the paint. there is no movement.

had a great day. a really great day. finished off amazingly. God has just liberated my heart again. for Him, alone.

love.

ps. how funny would it be if you named your firstborn child, 'Diary'?
whenever anyone wrote them letters or emails, it'd start with 'Dear Diary'.
ha.