Catmasutra - Serenading Monet

Claude Monet painted “Japanese Bridge Over Pool of Water Lilies” in 1889. Since the mid-1880s, Monet was able to secure regular sales such that he was able to buy the house in Giverny. That was to become his own personal paradise. Monet and his family (then still unmarried with an entourage of their eight children, six from Alice Hoschedé) began to transform his apple orchard into a garden that made history. He began to shape the garden as he would have liked to paint it. He assigned every plant its place, according to colors and varieties. Here the great impressionist found his earthly paradise, his plein-air landscape painting gaining sovereignty over Nature itself.

And yes, Halo is having a time of her life exploring and admiring Monet’s water lily garden - haha! When I’ve decided to “reverse pop art” in Catmasutra 2, I was intrigued and fascinated by Monet’s Japanese Garden. In the beginning, it seemed very daunting, if not, impossible to incorporate the Catmasutra cat into his paintings. Not sure what grabbed me that day, but I just took a large board and started applying paint on it. I needed to move my strokes a bit (painting details always leave me exhausted), and I must be deluded that I could do that with Monet’s Japanese Bridge. I’m self-taught so I have no idea about the techniques, etc and I have to explore intuitively. And the more I delve into it, the more the painting process became a delight. I can see his garden once you’re into it. How the trees move, the colors of the water lilies, the reflection from the pond, the shades, the smell of the water and the plants, and without realizing it, you're in Monet’s garden. In many of the paintings, if you ask me if I can paint them again, the answer is probably "no"...