Artistic inspiration:
As Sophie decided to take musical inspiration from the impressionist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy I looked to the Impressionist paintings of Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir
Oscar-Claude Monet, French: (14 November 1840– 5 December 1926) was a French painter, a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of plein air landscape painting. The term “Impressionism” is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris.
Monet’s ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. He began painting the water lilies in 1899, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.
It is from this series of famous painting of the water lilies that I chose a work to discuss with the clients of Rose Cottage. See image below.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir(French:25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919), was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that “Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau.”
Renoir’s painting that I chose to show to the clients and staff of Rose Cottage was not of the typical dancers and close up imagery of busy Parisian lifestyle but a quieter one entitled ‘Boating on the Seine’, see image below.
Both chosen images by Monet and Renoir clearly show the brushwork of the artists, an element I was keen that the clients might explore for themselves with their chosen medium and in response to the music being played by Sophie.
Workshops kindly funded by the Adelaide Health Foundation, Community Health Initiative Scheme 2019
Supported by The Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland. Special thanks to Alan Carrick, Mary Mooney, Silva Schwer and all the staff, clients and friends of Rose Cottage.
Art and Dementia projects 