New York Academy of Art: Terra Foundation Giverny

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Academy Summer Residencies 2016: Giverny

Our third essay from Giverny, France comes from Kristina Reddy MFA 2017.

Every morning I would wake up with the sun – happy, and excited to start the day. And who wouldn’t be, if they awoke in a beautiful home, situated amidst gardens and chirping birds! It is impossible not to see the French countryside as somehow “romantic.”

I think the most wonderful quality that is present here, in Giverny, is tranquility. Away from all the noise and business that we are so used to in New York City, Giverny welcomes us with peace. There is space to think, to wonder, and to just simply BE. It is precisely this nurturing environment that energizes me and gets me excited about going to the studio in the mornings.

I arrived to the residency with the intention to push through all my comfort zones, and to allow myself to make mistakes. Experimenting with acrylics and acrylic mediums, often left me feeling out of control, but also helped me to discover interesting things along the way. I became more confident with my tools, and the way I applied paint. I tried various surfaces—rice paper, duralar, and fabric board—adjusting the how and what kind of material combination worked best for what purpose. Of course, I also painted in oils, working fast so as to leave enough time for the paintings to dry. This process gave me freedom and allowed me to learn about my temperament, resulting in active brushwork and paintings that looked more alive.

Some of the work produced at the residency.

In regards to subject matter, my goal was to paint a series of snapshots of nature, both the terrain and the aquatic environments, and to capture something of life that did not need literal description. I focused on segments of flowers, streams, etc., and tried to embody the essence of the whole in the snapshot of its part. Everything in nature - every flower, every person – exists only as a part of a whole. There is an entire universe living inside each organism. My work was fed by the desire to understand and reconcile the natural and the artificial components of our existence, through the practice of abstracting the organic forms.

Inspired by the Patterns in the Stream

Inspiration in Giverny was inexhaustible—it was everywhere! One day, on a walk up the hill, behind the village, we discovered a group of cows. The animals were so beautiful and impressive that I just had to paint them! We were also lucky to have found some ostriches, kangaroos, and llamas…all, of course, were “natives” to the region!! Once, Matt even found a petite relative of a tarantula, visiting our home…but that is another story.

Cows, Ostriches, and Llamas

With permission from the Claude Monet Foundation, we were able to access the Monet’s gardens and paint directly from the vibrant and beautiful flowers growing there. I took many photographs of the creek and the water lilies—the running water and the plants that were swaying underneath. These became my primary inspiration.

Painting at the Flower Garden

The Lily Pond

Three weeks does not seem like a long time, but it has brought my classmates and I closer together. We worked hard, inspired and encouraged each other, cooked and ate together, and shared many beautiful moments along the way. And while our time in France, is almost over, I look forward to continuing our journey back in New York.

To everyone we have met during our stay at Giverny: Thank you! You have truly enriched our experience, and we will cherish it forever. Special thanks to Céliane Ainaron, Jan Huntley, Miranda Fontaine, and Véronique Bossard, for taking such a good care of us!

Merci & À bientôt!!

Studio Visit with some of the attendees featured here - Matt, Kurt, Jorge, Kristina, Jan, Dante, Miranda, Lewis, Naudline, François, Ines, Dominic, Charlotte, and Aleksandra

New York Academy of Art students on the road!

Academy Summer Residencies 2016: Giverny

Our second essay from Giverny comes from Matthew Durante MFA 2017.

Giverny is an inspiration. I paint both the landscape and the figure, but here the landscape is such that to paint anything else would seem to miss the point. It is enchanting.

I want to thank the New York Academy of Art and the Terra Foundation for an unparalleled experience. Rolling hills of thick greens of every shade, gardens and lilies of famous lineage, trees and hedges and flowers and all of them luminous in the sunshine, friendly bees and bugs and daddy-long-legs in their nooks, sucre crepes right down the road, Paris just a bit further, gracious and accommodating hosts who give us free passes to museums and gardens and bikes and food and a wonderful old house to live in, a dressing room to properly attire myself for facing the landscape, a Sorolla exhibition to walk to for quick inspiration, hearty meals sometimes with a cheese course, pastries and more pastries, a car for groceries and picnics and twirling round about the roundabouts, pleasant and supportive companions who are not unhinged, strange ear kissing rituals, classical chamber musicians who are also residents playing all around us, and lots of wine. This is Giverny.

“Ah Giverny…”

I may be burbling but this has been my first time in France, and indeed in Europe. I visited Paris before Giverny, and marched through the major museums in a jet-lagged stupor determined to see it all while staying upright. Combine that with a few days in London and it would seem I have seen almost every major work of pre-20th century art from my art history classes! Amazing. London seemed to have a dynamic energy similar to New York City, while Paris was leisurely and lovely, perfect for wandering the boulevards.

It was inspiring to see so much great painting in Paris and London, but overwhelming to see it all in so quick a time. So to calm my brain, I sketched the sculpture that is everywhere in Paris. The quality of European figurative sculpture in the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay is amazing. Combine marble, particularly when it glistens, and the human form, particularly when it is carved with skill and subtlety, and I must draw it.

Sketching sculpture at the Louvre!

After Paris, Naudline, Kristina, Jorge and I met up in Giverny. We were given a great studio with great light, but on sunny days it’s hard to remain indoors with the beautiful French countryside all around. So I went out to paint and have been doing so since. And in fact we’ve all been painting the landscape in some way: Jorge has been going to the Monet Gardens, Kristina is painting nature abstractions and chasing cows, and Naudline, whose work is imagination-based, has painted Giverny vistas and the colors have inspired her. On hot days it gets toasty in the studio, and this too prods us onward, outside into the sun, we the bold painters. It’s cool in the shade.

Le studio

The Giverny landscape has reacquainted me with challenges of outdoor painting, which I didn’t pursue in NYC, and has given me a chance to experiment. Coming here I knew I wanted to try painting with dust. And I knew I wanted to paint in color. Most of my landscape work in the past was monochromatic, a combination of charcoal powder and chalk and all of it sandwiched between clear acrylic. Practically I couldn’t work that way here in Giverny, so I went back to traditional brushes and started doing studies. Slowly, I started to stretch my landscape-painting color-muscles again, building confidence, thinking back to the landscape painting class I had with the mighty Mr. Nathan Fowkes. From him I learned to use a watercolor palette augmented with white gouache, which allows for the quick contrast of transparency and opacity, a technique often employed in oil painting (transparent shadows, opaque lights); with this palette, the watercolors are essentially transparent, but with a little white gouache they become opaque colors.

Lily painting. Intense!

During my first week in Giverny the studies I was doing were alright, and I knew with much more practice I would start to get my colors under control. But I still wanted to paint with dust. Indeed, after seeing the Pointillist paintings of Georges Seurat at the Musee d'Orsay, I really wanted to paint with dust. These, and all the impressionist paintings of Monet and others, implied approaching color less directly and more of as an effect of optical recombination in the eye. I wanted to try this for myself. I felt it would take me closer to what I was doing monochromatically, and give me new directions to explore.

Seurat’s Poseuse de dos [Model, Back View], 1887

With a bag of pumice as my powder and watercolors as my pigment, I manufactured my own dust. But without a fixative that is safe to use, like the casein fixatives available In the U.S., I couldn’t find a good way to make the dust stick to my paper. All I had available were the nasty ones that smell like a biohazard and I could hardly spread this miasma throughout beautiful Giverny. Additionally, working with pigments in a powder form can be toxic. So, the dust was a dud.

Studies Studies Studies

Then one day, frustrated by failures, stuck in studies, vexed by the search for something vital and more me — I realized I was just making things complicated and I should paint dots. The thought of endlessly dabbing my life away with a tiny pointed brush had been debilitating, but — last Saturday, as the resident chamber musicians serenaded me on the Terra grounds, their notes mixing with the wind and the birdsong — I reached down, and there were my stipple brushes, and that’s exactly what they’re for! Each dab creates a field of tiny dots, and suddenly I started to get more interesting color that, in places at any rate, had that vibrating quality that is found in some Impressionist painting. And even better, this fits into the whole noise of perception thing I’m after, dancing, twirling photons, like a field of darkness at night, like film-grain and memory. So, I’m going to keep playing with this.

My painting of Monet’s lilies

I want to thank Véronique Bossard, Miranda Fontaine and Cèliane Ainaron of the Terra Foundation for American Art, and Jan Huntley of the Foundation Claude Monet, all for their amazing hospitality. In particular I must single out Miranda for her generosity and thoughtfulness. Miranda, elle est supercool!

Academy Summer Residencies 2016: Giverny

Our first dispatch from France comes from Naudline Pierre MFA 2017.

The Normandy region. What a lush place—the colors are so fresh and vibrant: golds, greens, more greens, and all manner of chromatic excitements found in the flora. This place is like a dream. Old medieval towns with faces and figures carved into their wooden beams, church bells ringing to signal the passing of time. I kid you not, I saw (on several occasions) butterflies dancing with each other mid-air, going up, up, up in circles like something out of Disney’s Cinderella.

Day 1

I’d been in Paris for a little over a week trying to live like a local before I met my fellow residents, Matthew Durante and Jorge Vasquez at Gare St Lazare to ride the commuter train to Vernon-Giverny. We got on the 12:17 pm train. I got to practice my French. Less than an hour later, we arrived (along with a large group of tourists who were very ready to see Monet’s garden). We followed the masses with our luggage and, eventually, Miranda Fontaine, our glorious residency coordinator and now friend, found us at the end of Rue Claude Monet. Kristina Reddy, another resident, would join us a few hours later, rounding out our group of four.

Day 2

The Terra Foundation so generously gave us a car to use during our residency and we hopped in it and drove to Vernon, guided by Miranda. She showed us the framer’s shop that carries some essential art supplies. I bought a huge tube of Prussian blue—very impulsive but it felt right. Miranda also showed us our grocery store and then took us to a beautiful little cheese shop where the Camembert smelled just right. Later that day, we went for a hike up a hill and followed a path into some farmland where the grass was tall and the breeze was just right. Then I got that feeling, you know, when you squint your eyes and you feel like you’re out of your body and time slows down a little and you’re acutely aware of your surroundings and the sound of the bees and the ostrich slowly stalking you from behind a fence. Yes, we found a field with an ornery ostrich. In the French countryside. I really did experience that feeling, though. The ostrich was just the cherry on top. Later, we set up the studio, and got to work.

Day 3

Sorolla! Giverny is also home to Musee des Impressionnismes, which currently has a huge Sorolla show up. The light in his paintings! The color! The luminosity! I was itching to paint as soon as I left the exhibition—thankfully our house was across from the street from the museum. Later, in the studio, my brushstrokes were more free and loose.

Day 4

Miranda invited us to have early evening cider and snacks in Le Hameau’s (her office) courtyard, where we met her husband, François, and Jan, our friend who makes magic happen at Monet’s garden. After the cider, Jan gave us a private, after-hours, VIP tour of the garden, lilies and all. The setting sun looked like glitter coming through the spaces between the bamboo shoots. Later, in the studio, the colors of the garden made their way into my paintings.

Day 5

After a productive day in the studio, we ended our first week with a “cocktail dinotaire” in Jan’s courtyard under a beautiful tree complete with baby doves in its branches. I’m not joking about the doves. We enjoyed a beautiful meal and met the rest of Jan’s team: Inés, artist-in-residence, Dante, and Luis, who are both artists and horticulturists. We toured Inés and Dante’s studio and chatted about art.

Days 6-11

Work, work, work, work, work…

At some point during days 6-11, Jorge, Matt, and I took a late night bike ride. The air was cool and crisp. And on day 9, we drove to Lavacourt to have dinner at Miranda’s beautiful home were we sat with our new friends and watched barges go by on the Seine. There was an incredible moonrise and, again, the air was cool and crisp.

Day 12

We organized a small open studio event, where we had our new friends come and see what we’ve been working on. We had great conversations with our guests, and after they left, the four of us talked late into the night, sharing stories.

Day 14

I’m writing this entry feeling incredibly grateful for this experience. We’ve been shown an immense amount of hospitality. Although my time here isn’t up yet (we have 10 days left), this place has influenced me with its colors, flora, people, and quiet, lush beauty. Just yesterday, Kristina, Jorge, and I sat on the couch with some tea to watch the rain fall in the backyard. Painting the landscapes here have been a beautiful experience that has strengthened my eye for color and light. This place is just what I needed to dive deep into my imagination and create from that subconscious place where color and texture and meaning come naturally.

Days in Giverny

By Jiannan Wu (MFA 2016)

We have been in Giverny for one week, and I’d like to show you all the amazing things that have happened here. We live in a very convenient two-story house with a basement next to Monet’s Garden.

Living Room

Kitchen


The room I shared with Danial DaSilva (MFA2015)

Backyard

Our studio is only one minute away from our house, which is very commodious.

When I was working

Sometimes we ride bicycles to get to the places where we did paintings.

It is very nice that we could go through Monet’s Garden anytime we wanted, especially after 6 pm when all the tourists have gone, and the garden is very peaceful and beautiful.

Miranda Fontaine, who works for Terra Foundation for American Art, is a very nice and generous lady. She prepared everything for us and guided us to many places we wanted to go.