Conversations sous l’arbre – Chaumont-sur-Loire (France)
Stories of Water
Water has nurtured the imaginations of philosophers, artists and writers for thousands of years. It embodies life, symbolises renewal and movement. Poets have been instilled with its fluidity and vivacity whilst painters have captured the fugacious reflections on its surface. Alternately, a calm mirror image of the sky, an impetuous torrent ripping through the landscape or a tumultuous ocean… water is indeed a shape-shifting matter. It creates the universe, becomes deluge, engulfing lands and ships, or simply poises as the morning dew on the petal of a flower. The artist’s canvas transforms it into landscape, where the sky blue blends with the green of its depths, where waves undulate under the wind’s gentle breath, where The Raft of the Medusa is forever adrift. With water comes, not only contemplation, but also the thrill of adventure and the unknown. The history of humanity has no greater yet no more fragile heroin.