all my life in the reflections
by dawn chandler
12" x 24" ~ oil & mixed media on panel
this painting is available via my Etsy shop
The last art event of the "Before Times" I attended was the blockbuster Monet exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in January 2020. I was so excited to see the show that I bought two tickets for myself, for two days in a row. The first day I moved with the crowd (— and my goodness how we were packed in there! Shoulder to shoulder breathing in each other's winter breath. Makes me shudder to remember it.) On the second day I was the first in the show space and I sprang ahead to the last exhibition space, so as to take in Monet's late paintings — his waterlilies — alone, with no one else around me save a museum guard.
For a half hour I moved slowly from one painting to another, enraptured. It was one of the most exquisite museum experiences I've had.
Yet I wasn't thinking about any of that when I painted All My Life in the Reflections. And yet... I look at this painting and I see those long moments staring into Monet's Waterlilies bleeding through....