The first time I saw a piece made by Monet was in the MoMA and it was one of his famous Water Lilies. Growing up, I was never into art museums and looking at paintings as I found it boring and redundant. I remember going into the MoMA with low hopes, not really finding an interest in these places. When I saw the exhibit of Monet, it really took me by surprise. I was in awe of the way his unique style caught my eye, the liquid landscapes full of color and soft forms. It was the first time I really appreciated a painting and his art has stuck with me ever since.
Monet was a painter from France who found interest in drawing scenes of the outdoors around him from a young age. He is said to be the father of impressionism, an art form that involved painting “on the spot” rather than in a studio from sketches. He is a very intentional artist, putting his all into every piece of work and never settling for anything less than his best. A quote by him states "I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel," showing how he is always striving to capture moments as perfectly as possible. He was also said to have often painted the same scene over and over again under different lighting from the different times of day to fully capture what he was seeing. Through his ability to immerse himself into his work in this way, he could explore the effects of changing light and color which lead him to some of his most famous works.
His paintings, Water Lillies, consist of a series of 250 paintings full of displays of his creative process. As an artist that focused on capturing landscapes that he found particularly beautiful, he was moved by water flowers and ponds. The way he painted water lilies throughout the years is also apparent of his creativity shifting, as his first paintings were much more clear depictions of flowers and reflections, and later on his lilies became more blurry and abstract. This shows the shift his art took, changing his approach to show the essence of nature and how it made him feel rather than just displaying what he saw. His use of quick and light brushstrokes with a variety of hues matching the light changing throughout days come together in each one of his pieces. Monet invites viewers to see the world through his lens, and is an incredible creative that still impacts many to this day.
Although Monet and Doudna are creatives in very different fields, they still share some similarities in their creative process and drive to create. They are both very influenced by nature and the ways they perceive the world around them. Monet displayed his perceptions of nature physically in his painting, capturing the light and colors around him. Doudna perceived the world in a unique way as well, working at a molecular level and seeing RNA as a puzzle that can be studied and used to create new technologies. They both focused on experimental procedures in creating their art as well. Monet would switch between canvases and times of day to fully capture the visuals he was seeing, and would experiment with new colors and styles to make his final pieces. Doudna as a researcher obviously used experimental processes in her creations and focused on adaptation and collaboration in her CRISPR research. Overall while both creatives worked in vastly different fields, they both shared some of the same motivators in their creative processes.
Clude Monet was the first artist I gravitated towards as a child. I remember my dad filled my room with a bunch of his paintings. I just felt his paintings are so dreamy, you can get lost and daydream in them for hours. You could spend a day looking at every little dot that makes the whole.
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