Muse: “a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist”.

Many artists have a muse; a person or place that keeps inspiring, reveling new aspects and nuance.

Arguably the most powerful relationship in the history of art was not between two people but between a man and a plant: Monet and his water lilies. Through the last third of his life across a series of 250 paintings Monet explored the wonders of his back yard garden, creating maybe the most important series of paintings ever. Exploring The reflection of the sky on the surface broken by the lily pads, the blossoms floating to the surface, blooming and then sinking back down. Capturing the water itself something not as solid as earth but not as ethereal as air, that in between earth and sky. Monet found endless possibilities and meaning in his muse.

Now in the modern day our artist Carol King Hood has found a similar muse in Lake Lilly, a humble but important body of water in her village of Cape May Point.

In Lilly Lake Carol has found the same qualities that fascinated Monet in his gardens at Giverny but also finds qualities uniquely South Jersey, migrating monarch butterflies, swans and our special light. Carol continuously finds new ideas with the way the lake changes with the seasons, the migrations, the different clouds of the big shore sky. Thinking of Monet as he stepped out of his house and into his garden at Giverny, thinking of the
importance of water and lilies in the history of art, Carol steps out her front door to be enlightened.

D’May galleries is proud to present to the world the new water lilies collection by Carol King Hood.