I often dream of colors, those colors I have worked with during the day and that keep going in my mind while I sleep.
Such dreams are nice but usually vague and disappear quickly from my memory. This time, it was different: the image was vivid and so was the context. I wasn’t bathing in the yellow and green colors I am using these days, and I could clearly see myself in the act of painting.
I thought I should immediately do this painting, as close as I could, to see what it looks like in reality. The result was surprising; first, because it is very close to my dream, and second because, while I was painting it, other images associated with it came along, which connected some dots.
The first are the “”Night Paintings by American painter Lynette Lombard I had seen while visiting New York last year:
The second, and more obvious to me, is that of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, that I went to see again in Paris, a year ago. I don’t mean to compare myself to the father of Impressionism, but I do acknowledge the influence he has had on me since my college days when I discovered his art and that if his contemporaries while studying Art History.
There is much in Monet’s art that can touch and stimulate me: his absorption in the landscape, his study of colors and light, and towards the end of his life, his magnificent Water Lilies. A culmination of his life’s work, compounding everything he had learned and experienced, these powerful compositions invite us into a field of color and emotions. At a time where I am aiming to broaden the scope of my work, his example is not only impressive but certainly inspiring.