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Welcome!  In my previous blog, I announced my newest painting series called Willow Ponds, where I'm revisiting some favorite scenes of the pond located behind our house.  When I work on a new series, I always dive deep into study...looking for inspiration and making notes on how I want to proceed with the new paintings.  I usually "check out" art books from my own home library and at the top of the stack was this Corot book from the MET gallery.  

I got lost in the beautiful pages of Corot's artwork.  The muted, silvery, mossy green landscapes are dreamy and I knew right away I wanted to use this vibe for my Willow Pond series.  Below is a small painting that I've hung on to for a long time.  It provides constant inspiration when I'm looking for moody, muted inspiration.  When set next to Corot's paintings, it meshed beautifully and my vision for the Willow Pond series was created.  

I found this chapter, noted below, in the Corot book and it sent me down a rabbit hole.  It describes Corot as "the very poet of the landscape".  I couldn't agree more.  I already knew that my favorite Impressionist artist, Berthe Morisot, studied under him at a young age.  When critics began comparing her work to Corot, she burned most of her earliest work.  She wanted to stand on her own as an artist...but I can't help but think about how amazing art history is.  To imagine these artists working together over 150 years ago just blows my mind.  I would love to dream that my work would still be relevant long after I'm gone.  

My goal of starting up a blog is to keep a visual diary of my art happenings...and it just happens that some of you like to read my stories too, so thank you for following along with my ramblings.  I'll leave you with some inspiration photos  and quotes from the chapter of the Corot book.  

"There is only one master here..Corot.  We are nothing compared to him." -Claude Monet, 1897

"Corot drew and modeled every tree trunk with the same devotion and love as if it were a figure. "-Vincent Van Gogh

"He is still the strongest, he anticipated everything. "-Edgar Degas, 1883

Condensed from the Corot book-

Poetry became the catch all concept that explained his unsophisticated drawing, the indecisive forms and the vagueness of views.  Corot never copies nature, he dreams it, paints the exact sensation he has experienced.  The poetic feeling that the sight of nature arouses in him is so intense, that in order to transmit it better,  he falsifies and denatures the spectacle before him; and the object represented thus loses the very power that he wished to give it in order to communicate emotion.  To communicate emotion, however, was one of the tenants of Romantic landscape to which Corot was most faithful. This is not a landscape painter, this is the very poet of landscape...who breathes the sadness and joys of nature....the bond that makes us brothers of brooks and trees, he sees it.   His figures are as poetic as his forests.  Often named his paintings "souvenirs" . Silver light diffuses his paintings.  

"I never hurry to arrive at details, the masses and character of the picture interests me mosts."-Corot

It was values and shapes first, then color and detail for Corot.  Eventually he used less color perhaps a nod to studying photography in the 1860's -1870's which used more muted color of browns, grays and greens due to the technology available.  His suppression of color was quite conscious and considered.  Corot aspired to render the appearance of nature without adding anything.  He worked at getting down, with precision, the things seen and to ignored details, then adding secondary traits.  There was a shift in the 1870's to more light tonalities like Pissarro, Sisley and Monet.  Some say he was entering the modern era...but he never ventured into the colors and methods of Impression. Corot made his sentiments visible by rendering the "effect", the impression. He was the painter most intimately associated with this approach. His nymph and figures were inseparable from his landscapes.  

So...just a few thoughts and insights which align with my own thoughts.  The romantic landscapes...shapes and tones before color...getting out in nature to study.  So much more to study and learn. Stay tuned as my next blog post will dive into the palette colors that Corot used and my own limited color palette I'm thinking of for the Willow Pond series.