Grade 11, Sir John A. MacDonald Secondary School
"While I was studying the Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, I came across several paintings entitled Garden Path at Girverny which immediately reminded me of a picture I had taken while visiting Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island on July 15, 2018. I very much wanted to try to capture the colour, light and movement in my photograph the way Monet had done in his garden paintings.
"My painting represents a revisiting of my time at Butchart Gardens and a reworking of my photograph through the lens of Impressionism. The cause and effect of the Impressionist movement of the 1800s was important because it allowed artists to break away from traditional expectations of realistic images in order to capture the fleeting impressions of the moment which led the way for greater artistic freedom in the movements that followed. My painting also represents the cycle of change. This moment in time at Butchart Gardens that I captured on my camera in 2018 no longer exists outside of my photograph. Plants grow and die, and gardens change. Artistic movements and styles develop, grow and change. The old (Monet) inspires the new. Artists in the present and future will continuously change while looking for new ways to express themselves and portray the world they live in."