Get Sleepy: Sleep meditation and stories - Monet's Garden (Premium)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Thomas here. You're listening to a preview episode. You can enjoy the entire story tonight by subscribing to our supporters' feed. There you'll get access to the entire back catalogue, bonus episodes, and more, and it's all completely ad-free. Click the link below to learn more and thank you so so much. Me and the team really appreciate your support. The birds sing sweetly in the cherry and apple trees. As a straw-hatted Claude Monet opens the door to his home. He steps outside, stroking his long gray beard, and scans the clonorm Norman, his grand garden. The petals of newly budded flowers, pink, violet, white,

Starting point is 00:01:15 and red, are glistening with dew. He smiles, satisfied with the view, and reaches down to grab a small leather satchel and a wooden easel. Down the gravel path he walks, stopping in front of an enthusiastic row of pianies. With a squint of his eye, Moné scans the pink blooms, noting their tightly packed petals. A honeybee drones softly nearby. The air, though still cool, warms up with every moment. Yes, Monay thinks. This will be today's painting site. Monay opens his collapsible wooden easel, steadying its tripod legs atop the grey gravel path.

Starting point is 00:02:30 He bends down to his satchel and opens it, uncovering short-haired paint brushes, a wooden palette for mixing colours, and several tubes of oil paint. colors and several tubes of oil paint. Even now, 40 years after its invention, Monet is still enamored with squeezing ribbons of paint across his canvas or combining them upon his palette. Painting outside what artist's cool, unplanned air was one of Monet's specialities since his early days. The young artist spent hours

Starting point is 00:03:30 staring across the beaches and docks of his hometown Le Havre in the Normandy region of France. He noticed how the colours of the ocean morphed as the day progressed, or as the weather changed. Imagine the aqua marine or teal waves of a bright summer's day, or the gunmetal grey signalling an approaching storm. Think of the vast navy expanse of the sea at dusk or its utter blackness at midnight. Monès studied these changes and attempted to capture these fleeting variations and transformations in his paintings with some even painted right there on the beach. He sought to represent impressions, even titling one of his most famous canvases, impression, sunrise in 1872. When a Parisian art critic later commented that Monet and his fellow artists were impressionists,

Starting point is 00:04:59 the name stuck. And though it was originally meant to be a disparaging name, Monet and his friends, like Pierre Auguste Ramois, Bertamorizo and Camille Pizarro, loved it. They painted their impressions moment by moment, day by day. Today, Monay smiles, taking in a deep, calming breath. As he admires today's painting location, he recalls his first glimpses of the land that was to become his home, his personal paradise. In the early 1880s, Claude Monet boarded a train that meandered slowly through the French countryside west of Paris, through golden wheat fields plowed by horse cart, and passed half timbred houses with such roofs.

Starting point is 00:06:19 About 50 miles west of the French capital, Monet glanced out his window and spotted the hamlet of Giovanni, nestled at the confluence of the apta and sen rivers. Monet, in his obsession with light, watched the sun's rays shimmer across the river in small ripples, and soar it reflect upwards, casting a delicate glow on the leaves of an apple tree nearby. And it was at that moment that he realised he was home.

Get Sleepy: Sleep meditation and stories - Monet's Garden (Premium)

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