Conversations under the Tree

Water has cradled the imagination of philosophers, artists and writers for millennia. It embodies life and symbolises renewal and movement. Poets are intoxicated by its fluidity and liveliness, while painters capture the fleeting reflections on its surface. By turns a calm mirror of the sky, an impetuous torrent tearing through landscapes or a tumultuous ocean, water takes many forms. It creates the universe, becomes a deluge, swallows up lands and ships, or simply settles as dew on a flower petal. The painter’s canvas transforms it into landscapes where the blue of the sky melts into the green of the depths, where waves ripple under the caress of the wind, where the raft of the Medusa drifts for ever. Water inspires contemplation, but also the thrill of adventure and the unknown. The history of humanity has no heroine at once more powerful and more fragile.