Spring 2024
“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air.” R.W. Emerson
“The green and laughing world he sees, waters and plains and waving trees, the skim of birds , and the blue doming skies.” Leigh Hunt, Ode to the Spring of 1814.
Its Spring here in the southern hemisphere, and I’m so happy to be home in Australia. I think you find out when you’re overseas just how Australian you are, don’t ask me how many shops I went into in New York for vegemite, (there’s a grocer in Brooklyn that sells them) and how many eucalypts I greeted like old friends just for a smell of their leaves.
We went to the Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris to see the Monet water lily paintings spread out on the curved walls. The paintings are overwhelming in their size and use of colours, huge, beautiful. But what is amazing to me is, having been to Monet’s garden when the water lilies were flowering, how he painted something so transcendent in his garden, which, when you see it, is not so overwhelming. The ponds are muddy, and the water lilies are small and often dull on the water too.
Monet moved to Giverney after the death of his wife Camille, with his lover Alice, and later, after the death of his brother, his sister in law as well. The villagers of Giverney then were scandalized by this “artistic” household, (Monet and Alice weren’t married) and when they saw Monet sitting in the fields painting the haystacks in the farmland around Giverney they started to dismantle them before he could finish.
After this Monet was determined to put some space and a boundary between his farmhouse, his garden and the village. In 1893 he got permission to divert the Ru, a small branch of the river Epte which flows into the Seine, to create the ponds which gave him space and a boundary from the village and became his inspiration for many of his greatest works.
It would be easy to assume Monet always had the water lily pond to paint, but in fact the creation of it came about by what seemed like negative attitudes and events. The path of creation (of anything) isn’t always a straightforward line, it can have many twists and turns, but it’s always the way to trust and believe in yourself. If things had been more harmonious between the villagers of Giverney and Monet’s family, he may never have constructed the lily pond and these beautiful paintings may never have existed at all. What seems like something hard now, might just lead you to the creation of something new and wonderful.
As part of my own commitment to my creativity; in October I’m starting The Declaration Program with Sarah Steel, which is a 6 week online program to create a personal document for who you really are at your essence. I think of it as creating something like my own GPS system for connecting to the best parts of who I really am in this life. When you create you’re always tuning into yourself without the layers of negativity and emotional habits you might have picked up over time, and I want to be connected to this place more and more. If you’re interested in joining the last series of this program for 2024 you can find the link here:- www.sarahsteelcoaching.com.
I hope you can join us.
Love after love.
By Derek Walcott.
The time will come
When with elation
You will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the others welcome,
And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine, give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you ignored for another who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
Thee photographs, the desperate notes.
Peel your own image from the mirror,
Sit, feast on your life.
