The Garden as Art

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil by Pierre Auguste Renoir

It is the time of year when we find great joy and inspiration in our gardens. We love to watch our flower gardens slowly unfold through the spring and seemingly explode with the summer sun into a riot of colors, shapes and textures all demanding our attention. However, there is a unique challenge in painting the garden. The chaos of blooms and foliage can be daunting to compose and resolve into a painting. The camera is not a very helpful tool here, because photographs capture too much detail to be very useful as painting reference. If we become too precious in rendering each flower we can easily lose sight of the greater impression. We must paint the way we see. Painting from life can help us to retain that gestural style that gardens seem to demand and provide a perfect excuse to spend more hours outdoors in the garden. Who wouldn’t enjoy that?

As a result of our combined interests in gardens, flowers and p…