We had vistitors this past week!
My parents came and brought my Dad's brother, Duane, along for a tour of our neck of the woods!
Long, long overdue with any time with my uncle the past 10 years. He hadn't ever been to Roswell, New Mexico, or near this area. It was a joy to get close to him again and give him highlights of what the American SouthWest is all about!
We live an hour away from the "Most Dangerous Street in the USA". It's where the legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and the whole Young Guns gang were riding horses, marrying local girls and hiding out for their lives. We live 2 hours from Carlsbad Caverns, the largest caving systems in the USA. Go 3 hours from here and you'll find yourself immersed in the most beautiful and serine natual landscape known as White Sands.
It's also where the bomb heard round the world was created and tested.
We live in Roswell. We are the dairy capital of the USA but we are more known for the alien crash landing of 1947. We live in Alien Town.
We have a nifty trader at the South end of Roswell and we always take our visitors to see what is in store. Located in the midst of dairies and near human food fields, Blair's is the local used furniture, antiques, estate sale items, tools and convenience goodies like movie popcorn munching while you shop kind of place. Last visit, we bought our slighty used back pation fireplace seating set for nearly half of what would be expected in a store. Everyone was perusing. Finn was in the toy aisle. Uncle was consumed with reading all the signs on the wall. Finn ran up and dragged me into the furniture room. Rows of bedroom sets, office chairs, desks, bureaus and miscellaneous items filled the space. I always look at the framed artworks available anywhere. Sometimes just for the frames, sometimes for the gem inside. I recognized an artwork and choked when I saw what I had in my hands....a genuine Claude Monet lithograph of "Camille and the child" also known as "Madame Monet and Child" circa 1875. I turned over the frame and there it was. All the details from the art gallery who lovingly framed and sealed this artistic artifact. It had a piece of tape on it with $30 handwritten on it. I collected myself and nonchalantly asked the cashier to hold the frame behind the counter until I was finished shopping. I giggled to myself throughout the entire store. They had no idea what they had on their hands. Sometimes it pays to be art smart! Claude Monet is most well-known today for his series of serene water lilies paintings, 19th-century Impressionist Claude Monet was a groundbreaking tour de force in the development of expressive art. Throughout his long life, which spanned the years between 1840 and 1926, Monet would progress from drawing amusing caricatures of friends to capturing the elusive nuances of natural scenes in various attitudes of light and color. Along with the other Impressionists, Monet's aim in his painting was to capture reality and analyse the ever-changing nature of light and color. He recorded his surrounding faithfully, from the grime of a Paris railway station to the beauty of his later paintings based on the gardens he created at Giverny in north-eastern France. Monet is one of the most influencial artists of the modern era. The ways he manipulated the brush and paint, used mediums that he could afford. His visions of the everyday life for him. Monet was not without tragedy. While carrying their second child, Camille Monet contracted tuberculosis, and weakened by childbirth, died in 1879. The painting, Camille on Her Deathbed, is Monet's final tribute to his wife, a figure covered in flower blossoms and feathery brush strokes, her face bathed in light. Following his loss, the artist completed a series of 12 frozen ice landscapes as he mourned.Muted colors, frozen landscapes paved the way and by the next decade, he had found those pops of color and lively landscapes you may recognize. Claude Monet and his second wife, Alice, had moved their family to the hamlet of Giverny where they bought a home with property in 1890. Monet set to work to create a private haven where he would produce some of his most well-loved works over the final decades of his life. His series of water lily pond paintings, which consists of approximately 300 canvases in total, 40 of them in large format. Claude Monet had painted his first renditions in the 1890s but produced the majority of the works during the final two decades of his life. After losing both his second wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean, in 1911 and 1914 respectively, Claude Monet sought consolation by embarking upon a great new work, a series of massive Water Lilies panels.
My parents came and brought my Dad's brother, Duane, along for a tour of our neck of the woods!
We have a nifty trader at the South end of Roswell and we always take our visitors to see what is in store. Located in the midst of dairies and near human food fields, Blair's is the local used furniture, antiques, estate sale items, tools and convenience goodies like movie popcorn munching while you shop kind of place. Last visit, we bought our slighty used back pation fireplace seating set for nearly half of what would be expected in a store. Everyone was perusing. Finn was in the toy aisle. Uncle was consumed with reading all the signs on the wall. Finn ran up and dragged me into the furniture room. Rows of bedroom sets, office chairs, desks, bureaus and miscellaneous items filled the space. I always look at the framed artworks available anywhere. Sometimes just for the frames, sometimes for the gem inside. I recognized an artwork and choked when I saw what I had in my hands....a genuine Claude Monet lithograph of "Camille and the child" also known as "Madame Monet and Child" circa 1875. I turned over the frame and there it was. All the details from the art gallery who lovingly framed and sealed this artistic artifact. It had a piece of tape on it with $30 handwritten on it. I collected myself and nonchalantly asked the cashier to hold the frame behind the counter until I was finished shopping. I giggled to myself throughout the entire store. They had no idea what they had on their hands. Sometimes it pays to be art smart! Claude Monet is most well-known today for his series of serene water lilies paintings, 19th-century Impressionist Claude Monet was a groundbreaking tour de force in the development of expressive art. Throughout his long life, which spanned the years between 1840 and 1926, Monet would progress from drawing amusing caricatures of friends to capturing the elusive nuances of natural scenes in various attitudes of light and color. Along with the other Impressionists, Monet's aim in his painting was to capture reality and analyse the ever-changing nature of light and color. He recorded his surrounding faithfully, from the grime of a Paris railway station to the beauty of his later paintings based on the gardens he created at Giverny in north-eastern France. Monet is one of the most influencial artists of the modern era. The ways he manipulated the brush and paint, used mediums that he could afford. His visions of the everyday life for him. Monet was not without tragedy. While carrying their second child, Camille Monet contracted tuberculosis, and weakened by childbirth, died in 1879. The painting, Camille on Her Deathbed, is Monet's final tribute to his wife, a figure covered in flower blossoms and feathery brush strokes, her face bathed in light. Following his loss, the artist completed a series of 12 frozen ice landscapes as he mourned.Muted colors, frozen landscapes paved the way and by the next decade, he had found those pops of color and lively landscapes you may recognize. Claude Monet and his second wife, Alice, had moved their family to the hamlet of Giverny where they bought a home with property in 1890. Monet set to work to create a private haven where he would produce some of his most well-loved works over the final decades of his life. His series of water lily pond paintings, which consists of approximately 300 canvases in total, 40 of them in large format. Claude Monet had painted his first renditions in the 1890s but produced the majority of the works during the final two decades of his life. After losing both his second wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean, in 1911 and 1914 respectively, Claude Monet sought consolation by embarking upon a great new work, a series of massive Water Lilies panels.
And now you know a little bit about Claude Monet and you can sound cultured when the time is right!
