The Wind Makes the Sea Dance
Artist: Valerie Eickmeier
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Measurements: Three 24”x36” panels
c. 2024
The Wind Makes the Sea Dance is inspired by the three movements of Claude Debussy’s 1905 Impressionist composition La mer.
La Mer (“The Sea”) is one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works. Although La Mer is not a literal portrait of the ocean, it takes us deep into the world of atmosphere, metaphor, and synesthesia. I chose La Mer as my inspiration for this commission because it correlates well with my own artwork and interests.
Debussy explored music’s ability to suggest and evoke moods and pictorial images. He was inspired by visual art, and like many composers, he used musical techniques to emulate nature.
He was strongly influenced by the misty impalpability of J.M.W. Turner’s sea paintings and Japanese artists Hokusai and Hiroshige. I have also been profoundly influenced by these artists during my career.
A Triptych of Paintings
Debussy referred to La Mer as “trois esquisses symphoniques” or “three symphonic sketches.” To correlate with each of the movements, the artist has used three 24” x 36” canvases as a format to express a visual interpretation of La Mer. The paintings are pictorial expressions that evoke the sensibilities that can be heard and felt in Debussy’s beloved symphony.
About La Mer
The first movement’s title, “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” is not intended to prescribe a particular program but merely to indicate a progression from near darkness, in which objects are indistinct, to brightness, in which they are clearly perceptible.
The second movement, “Play of the Waves,” is a lighter scherzo, scored with extreme delicacy. It is a contrasting interlude between the stormy and emphatic passions of the first and last movements.
The third movement, “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” begins with the waves softly surging up in the low strings, answered by the winds—the woodwinds, blowing high up in chromatic shrieks. The struggle of wind and waves is developed at length, turning to material drawn from the opening movement, and building to a brilliant sunlit conclusion.
Notes by Steven Ledbetter, Boston Symphony Orchestra
About the Artist
Valerie Eickmeier is a studio artist, Dean Emerita and Professor Emerita at the Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University, Indianapolis. She served many roles throughout her 39-year career at Herron, including teaching studio fine-arts courses and serving as the dean from 1998 to 2018. Eickmeier earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1982 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1979. Eickmeier’s career encompasses numerous visiting artist lectures, private and corporate commissions, and more than 60 gallery and museum exhibitions. She received many prestigious awards including two special project grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Creative Renewal Fellowships from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission, and six Arts and Humanities Research Grants from Indiana University, which were funded by the Lilly Endowment. She currently lives and maintains a studio practice in Carmel, Indiana, and Sarasota, Florida, where she is represented by Burns Gallery.”
About New Works
New Works: An Arts Commission Project is an initiative by the Center for the Performing Arts to promote and sustain central Indiana’s working artists and arts communities in an inclusive way by supporting the creation of new works across all performing arts disciplines.
