Artist Profile - Monet

My artist's full name is... Oscar Claude Monet

His date of birth is... November 14th 1840

His date of death is... December 5th 1926

His father's name was... Claude Adolphe Monet

His father's occupation was... a grocery business

His mother's name was... Louise Justine Aubrée Monet

His mother's occupation was... a grocery business

His siblings were: one older brother

He went to school to Le Havre secondary school of Arts. He dropped out when he was sixteen because his mother passed away.

He was married once to a woman named Camille Doncieux. They got married in 1870 but she died of tuberculosis in 1879.

While he was alive there was a lot happening in the world:

- Civil War in 1861 to 1865

- First World War in 1914 to 1918

- French occupation of Mexico in 1863 to 1867

- Franco-Prussian war in 1870 to 1871

- War of the Pacific in 1879 to 1884

He did not have an easy life, he had to deal with the death of his mother, the death of his wife and in the last years that he was alive he lived in Paris during the first world war.

One thing most people might not know about this artist is: he lived in The Netherlands for a while.

Monet mostly worke with watercolor and he is associated with the movement called Impresionism.

Monet's most famous works include: Sunrise, Women in the Garden & La Grenouillère.

Two pieces I like are:

- Water Lilies (1906), because I saw the painting in the movie Titanic and I love that movie. It is also the reason why I picked Monet to be the artist I'd write about because I don't know a lot of artists.

- Poppies Blooming (1873), because my grandma was called Poppy and she passed away before my mom even met my dad so I'd want to talk about that painting because it reminds me of her.

Edward Hopper

I see... A lady grabbing some fruit from the buffet.

I hear... People talking to each other in the background

I smell... Freshly baked bread

I taste... Orange juice

I feel... Like I am on holiday in France

I remember... When I went to London and had breakfast in a very small French looking café. It looked really fancy from the outside but their tea was bitter and the food was gross.

With people's voices in the background, there were hundreds of guests eating in the breakfast room of the hotel in Paris. The cooks worked through the night to get all the food ready in time. Hours of baking, cutting fruit in pieces and preparing meals were needed before the staff could bring it out to the people waiting to eat their breakfast. A lady at one of the big round tables stood up and walked to the buffet. From the corner of her eye she saw a couple sitting at one of the other, much smaller, tables. She tilted her head to the side, trying to hear what they were telling each other. All she got was giggles from the lady when the man told her another one of his jokes. She smiled as she figuered that the two must be on one of their first dates. She looked back at the company she had at her own table. Then she looked down at her hand and saw her ring glinstering in the light that came into the room from one of the high windows. Once again she looked at her table and saw that there was now a man staring back at her. She laughed and walked back, back to her fiancé.

Just Desert

Anne had always had a passion for what others would consider 'scary'. The mystery behind it had always intrigued her. It would draw her in like a paper towel does to water. It was like she never had a choice.

Earlier that evening her parents had decided it was time for them to go out for dinner to catch up on what was going on, so she was on her own.

She got up from her comfortable spot on the couch when she heard someone call for her. Completely aware of the moment, she felt herself change. Lacking any expression on her face she walked towards the noise.

The sound kept growing stronger and she became more emotionless with every step she took, reaching into the darkness that was in front of her, her arms stretching into nothing.

Her white nightgown was flowing around her like the wind swept it up even though all the doors and windows were shut and locked.

Anne brought herself in the direction of the kitchen, not knowing what made her go there except the noise that was now screaming out her name. It was a deafening sound and it hurt her ears as if someone was trying to put a needle through her eardrum.

Her body was out of control. She wanted to put her hands up to cover her ears, but she couldn't. Too afraid to face what made her do all of this, she wanted to run away. But again, she couldn't.

She remembered one time when her brother took off running for his life when they were at their grandparents place.

Back then she had had the exact same reaction as she was having now.

She could feel her body moving but she wasn't in control of what was happening. It wouldn't be long until the unknown would have her completely in its possession. She knew it was coming.

Her legs dragged her into the kitchen and right at that moment her sight got blocked. She was blinded but not like she had ever been before. All she could see was white, scaring her even more than the black had done the last time.

That was the moment she felt a click in her head and she was gone.

The unknown had taken over, possessing her body just like it had before. In one way, she was used to having something else inside her body while she was just floating in the air. She was like a shadow of herself, waiting to be left alone so she could go back into her body.

She could see herself walking towards the light that now, even from this distance, made her eyes squint. She waited a few seconds to let her eyes adjust to the brightness, they couldn't. It was too much, she couldn't get used to it. The longer she kept watching her body do things that were not controlled by her, the more pain she felt.

Not being able to see what was going on in front of her body, she was not able to see what she was walking towards. All she could see was what was happening to her body itself and what was happening to the other side of it, the opposite side of the light. She saw herself reaching out, trying to touch the object. Her hands, or better still the body's hands, reached into the light and she could no longer see them, they were taken in by the light.

All she could do was trying to concentrate on watching the movements the arms made. She hoped it would help her figure out what was there. The body stepped back and then forward again, as if it had to make room for something. The shoulder pulling back, as if it had to pull something towards itself, as if it was opening something.

She couldn't see the drawers but she had lived there all her life, she knew what was in them. The body opened the drawer, while she kept trying to remember what was in there. Then she saw the body turn around, turning its back to the light. In her right hand was a butcher knife, with a blade so sharp she could just imagine it cutting through her skin effortlessly.

The arm brought the knife up to the face, and without any hesitation the hand turned the blade towards the cheek of the girls' lifeless body and pushed it against the skin. Anne saw how blood started dripping down the blade in flows of redness, the streams going faster as the cut became deeper.

The body turned back around to face the light which was as bright as she imagined the sun to be. The hand whipped the blood, that was still covering the blade, off onto the cheek it had just cut into. Only to smudge it even more than it already was. She saw her body moving towards the light again. She could see what her body was doing, what she was doing. She lowered the knife and it grew even brighter.

The poster

The Poster

This poster is big
with many different colors
for example blue
but also colors like green
white brown beige black and stone shapes

I think this poster is okay. I don't really like it and I don't really not like it. It's just that I don't mind it being there. I wouldn't buy it in the store, I wouldn't put it up somewhere in my house but I just don't really care for it.

It has a cool effect and it makes me feel like it is winter and it is freezing.

It makes me think of our holiday house we have back home, an hour and a half away from where I actually live. It has cool decorations, it is often cold there and it won't really heat up that easily but it still feels warm and cosy. I used to come there as a kid and play outside for hours and hours, climbing in trees, collecting pinecones and swimming in the pool. I'd always have scratched knees, something I can't imagine having anymore now. I would always be running around, playing with my brother or other kids I met there. I'd fall and trip all the time, not even having time to put any bandages on my wounds until 'late' in the evening when someone would drag me inside, put me in the bathtub and take care of what damage I had done to myself that day. I've become really careful with what I do and I don't like getting dirty unless I plan on it. I am that girl that walks around with hand sanitizer and a tide-to-go stick. When it comes down to it I don't mind getting dirty at all but, like I said, I'd have to plan on it and be able to go home and shower right away.

Pillow

The pillow

The pillow made me think of several things but in no way, shape or form about sleeping.

Actually it reminds me of pyramids, Cleopatra and mummy's. You often see how mummy's are wrapped in sheets of canvas or something alike and the pillow looked just like that to me. It's rather disturbing.

I imagine the smell to be disgusting, like death has been sitting in it for thousands of years. Who would want to lay their head on that? Nobody, let alone actually falling asleep on it.

I like how someone mentioned that it looked like it had something to do with an chicken, a dragon egg, a ship and what not because honestly, I can not say anything else about the pillow than I already did.

I don't want to fall asleep with my head on something that mummy's have been wrapped in and smells like death.


Haiku:

Pyramids make me
think Cleopatra was old
wrinkled and dusty.

What will your future be like?

I liked the video that the lady showed us with all the things that meant happiness to the student. I think she did a really good job, I liked the angles she used and I loved the music. The speaker asked that if the music would have been Miley Cyrus it would have made us just as happy as this song had. I was the only one, of course, who said "YES" really loud because everybody knows I love Miley even though I don't agree with her decisions. I liked the assignment the teacher gave the students because it really makes them think of what does make them happy. And how they could show that to others.
I think the commercial with the girl, the mother and the bag of chips was really inappropriate. Society complains how young kids and teeagers have no respect and don't have any manners. Well, no wonder they don't if commercials like this one are shown on television. I'd say either say watch what you show them or suck it up and stop complaining.

According to the paper she handed out there's several schools throughout the United States but the schools all have different classes / majors / courses / whatever you call them but how do they decide which of those are they going to teach there?

I would like to be an event planner
 

I am supposed to go back home once this schoolyear is over so I'll be going to school there but as the website is in Dutch I figured that linking that would not make any sense. If I would be going to a college in America I would really have liked to go to FIDM. I don't know if that is realistic at all but a girl can dream, right?

 

 

Newspaper

I am not someone who ever really reads the newspaper because she wants to. It's more that I have to for my journalism class. When I do read the paper I always look for crime related articles, just because you know something has actually happened and it's not some boring story on how the grocery prices have gone up again.

I couldn't really find any crime stories but what I did find was an article on bull riding. One of my host mom's daughters recently took me to one of the shows in Ozark and I just did a blog post on that experience for my own blog. Here is what I wrote:


'We arrived there at 5.30 pm because that’s when the doors would open and thirty minutes later the show would start. So we both took a seat and we were there early so we watched the guy on the tractor driving circles in the ring for a while.

It was six o’clock but the show wasn’t starting yet. So they were a little late? No big deal. Soon enough it was twenty minutes later and Nicole and I started wondering why it was taking so long. So I stood up and asked the first people that I saw what time the show was supposed to start: eight pm.

The show would start two hours later than we thought it would. We got there two and a half hours early. The people who were there really must have thought we were die hard bull riding fans, just like they were. Not so much.

We laughed so hard, thinking we were there for so long before the show even started and we surely didn’t end up staying there to watch the show for the same amount of time.

It was definitely something I haven’t seen before, only on telly. I don’t agree with using bulls as an object to entertain other people by getting them all heated up and trying to ride them but it certainly is some show.

Games for kids during the break

We were seated underneath one of those huge lights, the same they have at football games. The light attracts bugs and other flying organisms that like to sit on my skin to either suck my blood or freak the hell out of me. This resulted into me screaming and embarrassing myself and Nicole when there was a huge ‘thing’on my leg. I almost cried: I was so scared that it would do something. We left. It was a nice show, just not nice enough to have flying creatures bugging you for the time you are there. Or longer, what if they are in your hair or clothing and you don’t notice? Just saying.

All together I am super glad Nicole took me their, it was a typical American experience. It was nice to see it together, both of us for the first time!'