Flower Arranging

And when is it 'gardening'?

I ought to be on my way to Crystal Palace as I type. I have been commuting all week to Ruth’s garden, endeavouring to prepare it for her birthday party this Saturday.

Ridiculous, really, to have spent time and money and effort to create a beautiful garden when Ruth’s guests - 30+ very young people in their early-20s - won’t have a clue what they’re looking at, if they look at all.

I am always rather rude to friends who come and sit in my garden and say ‘the garden looks lovely’. “You don’t know what you’re looking at though, do you?” I reply.

‘The Artist’s House at Argenteuil’ by Claude Monet, The Art Institute of Chicago

Casting around for a fourth subject to take for my AS Levels in circa 2005 I settled on History of Art, a subject that was being newly introduced at the school. How that decision opened my eyes.

Of course, I could appreciate art in a sort of shallow way before - but in Ms Williams’ classroom I learned information - the key - to unlock understanding of art.

Ms Williams - one of those teachers who changes your life forever - was rightly snotty about Impressionist painting being used on biscuit tins and mouse pads (it was the 00s after all, and those were still A Thing). These weren’t just pretty pictures of fields and flowers.

For the first time, oil paints were made portable. Train lines were being built across Europe. Photography was developing (lol) at pace, capturing moments in a way impossible before.

‘The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil’ by Claude Monet, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Rebelling against the Academy, with it’s vast canvases of biblical scenes and classical themes, painters like Monet began their efforts to capture moments of fleeting beauty on canvas - to steal the light, the movement, the colour - of nature in its pure form.

As their methods of painting en plain air developed, their themes began to include the every day. Women - gasp - began painting the moments of their domestic lives. Not grand portraits of stiff Dukes, but laundry on a line, a baby in its cradle.

Lacking the information to really understand something means missing out on the rich depths of what you can see when you really look.

I somehow have written myself into a corner of comparing the few weeks I have been planting things in Ruth’s garden to a painting by Monet. Which is extremely awkward.