My Trip To The North Carolina Museum Of Art

Submitted By Arell-Owens
Words: 1083
Pages: 5

Arell Owens
Art-160
Mr. Wagner
December 7, 2014
My trip to the North Carolina Museum of Art was very memorable. It was kind of hard to pick a painting because they were so many that stood out to me. However, the one painting that stood out to me the most was, The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists which was an oil work on canvas by Claude Monet. The 35 x 36 in. (88.9 x 91.4 cm) painting was a picture of the seine river early in the morning. Other than just painting a simple picture of the landscape of the water the picture depicts his strong effect, or what others might say the Impression, which is made by the pictures surrounding environment objects the light and smoke. When looking at the painting you can see the beauty of the composition along with the content and how the light and texture plays a part in the image.
As someone else would look at it from a bad point of view would think of the picture as someone who just put something together with a lot of colors but, if you look at how the surface of the water only have a few waves in it probably because of the early morning and the fog playing a part in the breeze. It is quite interesting how you can see the reflection of the trees on the right hand side of the picture. Somehow I think he tried to convoy two triangles with the mist of the air. However, that shape kind of directs my eyes to the river where the sky and the water meet. In a better sense the focal point of the painting is the vaguest part of the painting. Even when it is a small view of the riverbank, I like the placement of the relative darkness on both sides of the triangle. The picture still gives you a feeling of infinity, extension, and broadness because of the way the water, the sky, and the mist meets each other.
Monet knows how to use colors, the color and the light wakes up every sense in the viewer to assure that you feel the picture. Since the art was done in the late 1845 which was after the industrial revolution which made it easier the painter to have access to such pigments that was once too expensive to buy. You can see not at first sight, a lot of pure colors. You see blue, green, white and a little pink and violent. The hue of the painting is spacious and soft: the baby blue clouds , the soft white sheet like clouds with a hint of pink while the green and violent leaves all come together equally with their hazy reflections off the water or paper per say. Monet put more light on the right side by depicting it with more details and brighter colors while making the left side relatively darker and colder. The capture and placement of lights directs the viewer's eyes from left to right while delivering a sense of airflow motion at the same time. Whoever the viewer may be might be intrigued with how great the painting is.
Looking at the closer picture you will see a very important signature as an impression painter the impasto look. Monet used heavy impasto on the painting. Impasto is a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface (or the entire canvas) very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas (Wikipedia). Although, He used thick impasto in his painting you can still see the detail that use when painting. The sky, air and water are all combined interpreting one another. However, it is hard to try to find out what the painting is by looking at the light and dark relationship because Monet did a good job making it stand out with the uncertainty of what it is.
Claude Monet is a famous artist who is known for many different