“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.”

– Claude Monet

Last summer, during a visit to Atlanta, I had the good fortune to visit the High Museum and view the art of Claude Monet.  I had seen images of his work in Art textbooks, but the small photos could not come close to portraying the impact of the massive Water Lilies triptych when it hangs right in front of you.  I understand now why we were permitted to take cellphone pictures — they do not even come close to conveying the power in the painting.

I sat on a bench, fifteen feet from the canvas, and for more than twenty minutes was mesmerized by the way Monet’s use of color and shadow drew me right into his painting.  The water seemed to move and ripple, and the light seemed to glisten and change; and after a short time, I no longer needed to think about why or how — I simply needed to sit by his lily pond and enjoy its wonder.

Painting any canvas that stretches forty-five feet wide would have to be a huge undertaking.  What takes Monet’s work into the extraordinary is the fact that he began painting his beloved water lilies in 1914 and spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1926, trying to capture what he saw in them.  It is mind-boggling to realize that this great artist completed 250 versions of his lily pond — and still he remained dissatisfied with the results.

“These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession.  They are beyond the powers of an old man, and I nevertheless want to succeed in rendering what I perceive.” — Claude Monet

Monet spoke these words in 1908.  It was not until 1920 that he completed the famous painting in the photo.  Still he continued to work at trying to capture the beauty he perceived as he sat in his spot by the pond.  He always felt that he came up short, and remarked, “I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint…”  I suspect that what Monet was trying to convey to us was more than the color, the light, the shadow and the movement in the lily pond.  There was such passion in the brushstrokes of the water lilies.  There was such energy in the paintings — and I was drawn into it in an instant.  Can you imagine the kind of passion that would lead a man to spend fifteen years of his life trying to capture the essence of one piece of nature’s beauty?

What was it that an 80-year-old man with cataracts saw in that pond that his limitations of canvas and paint could not convey?  I suspect that Mr. Monet saw the things that only the heart can see.  Although he felt that he had failed in expressing the totality of the beauty he experienced in his time by the lily pond, I would have to disagree.  I will never forget my visit to the lily pond, because it not only opened my eyes, but it gave me a chance to see their beauty through the eyes of my heart.  Monet was right — we don’t need to understand, we only need to love.