Blessed 4th in series of 5 - Limited Edition of 6 Print

LOTUS COLLECTION A small beautiful collection of lotuses in bloom, with the photographs taken with pure delight an amazing display I experienced on several visits to capture many different flowers in bloom, from bud to development in different lighting…. Being inspired and admiring many different artists and styles, with my focus on Monet and impressionistic art for this set. Through be manipulated within photoshop to express the shear dream like quality that Monet produced with his water lily series. It is said that it may have been inspired by the poet Mallarmes prose poem of 1885, Le nenuphar blanc (the white waterlily) The critic Julien wrote that Claude Monet has other ideas (in comparison to the Japanese artist Hokusai’s works) It is light, always the play of light he pursues; (As a photographer also does) and, so that we won’t question this, he does not wish to distract us by varying his composition. It is also said within ‘Monet & Japan’ Monet’s pool could encompass ‘the changing spectacle of the universe’. The Japanese garden could embody the forces of nature in a concentrated, purified form which made them available for contemplation; the few brushstrokes that suggest mist or clouds, a tree, a rock, a stream and flowers can evoke the infinity of space into which human consciousness might dissolve, where the distraction between subject and object, mind and matter is obliterated. This is the essence of Zen Enlightenment. It is also the essence of Monet’s mode of creation. It was probably impossible for Monet to paint waterlilies without being aware that the lotus – waterlilies of the genus Nymphaea – had profound spiritual meaning in Buddhist imagery. And throughout Eastern religions. The philosophical implications of the haiku: ‘Why does the lotus, which remains so pure although it is rooted in mud, deceive us by showing dew on its leaves like unstrung jewels?’ or the lotus is a Buddhist symbol of the ‘true nature of beings… unstained by the mud of the world… and to realise through Enlightenment’? Printed on Hahnemuhle fine art paper