Heavenly Shades of Night



"Water Lily Pond"
Claude Monet

 

The past few evenings I’ve had reason to be thankful for the nation’s official time keepers giving back the hour they yanked from us last fall. The extra minutes at day’s end give such a blessed opportunity to be still and wrap myself in twilight, becoming more the observer than observed.

Watching the long slow fade outside makes me wonder about the reality of perception. What looked at first like oak trees and oleander bushes against a cloudless sky gradually became shifting patterns of greens, grays and blues.

I am fascinated trying to pinpoint the exact moment the oleander leaves turn from olive green to forest green to gray black to lamp black. Did I miss it?

It was these fleeting color shapes in which the Impressionists immersed themselves and in so doing changed the course of modern art. Art critics scoffed at them for sacrificing the true nature of things for a chaos of color blobs. After twilights like today, I am certain that Monet and his friends were opening wide the doors of perception.