Monet ~ Inspiration from Nature and Art ~ Part I

By flowertalk On April 16, 2012 · 2 Comments

Our Inspiration comes from Nature

The beauty of Nature’s colors, textures, and form is our inspiration at Silkflowers.com. Our goal is to reproduce this natural beauty of the outdoors in permanent form. At first glance, people tend to assume our designs are alive and often are surprised to discover they are silk! If we are successful in bringing about this response, then we have accomplished our goal.

Monet’s Garden at Giverny (right) . The color palette of the painter’s vivacious garden, is one of many inspirations of Silkflowers.com. “The Painter’s Palette” (featured left). The painter himself, Claude Monet sitting next to the lily pond in his garden at Giverny, c.1910. Photo © Hulton Archive/Getty Images (top left).

Our Inspiration is refined by Art

Recently I visited the Cincinnati Art Museum which is currently hosting an exhibition featuring the works of the Impressionist, Claude Monet – “Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection”. I could not resist the opportunity to see this collection as his gardens in Giverny, France have influenced our floral design development. We share his inspiration through many of our designs and celebrate his artistic genius and his garden creation. A beautiful garden like this is our motivation for designs like our “Painter’s Palette” centerpiece. Notice how perfectly this wonderful silk flower arrangement blends with my photo from his garden in 1997.

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece” Claude Monet

Peony, Rose & Delphinium Centerpiece

I have had the pleasure to visit Monet’s gardens in Giverny on three occasions: June, 1997; January, 1998; and May 2010. The appearance of his garden changes in color and texture many times during a season because his plantings are so diverse and timed to bloom at different intervals. In Claude Monet’s own words, “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”. His garden was as much his art as his paintings. He used it as inspiration to create many paintings based on how light affects color, which made him a leader in the Impressionist movement. Explore the Giverny Gardens website. It’s a terrific source of information and more photographs.

Future blogs will have more of my photos and videos from my three visits to Giverny – I think you will find them to be very unique.

Tim Hennessy

Co-Founder, Silkflowers.com