Monday, March 3, 2008

I Know How Monet Was Feeling


What a shock. While driving home today I passed the same pasture I have seen for 10 years. It's the pasture from the recent blog "Can't Get It Out of My Mind" in February.
The trees were cut down.
Bulldozer marks haphazardly gashed the land.
The rusty car was gone.
There is a story in books on Monet about the Poplar tree series of paintings. As you know, Monet liked to work in series, painting the same feature in different lighting situations over a period of time. You've seen them: Rouen Cathedral, haystacks, etc. He was working on a row of Poplar trees and heard the farmer was about to cut them down. He paid the farmer a sum of money to leave them until he could complete his painting. Monet didn't usually have much money.
This has happened before - several scenes I've painted are gone. Old barns, houses and such have been torn down after I painted them. Gone. That leaves me with an odd feeling.
How can you tell how it used to be if there's nothing left to see??
from "Prince of Tides" by Jimmy Buffet

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