Waterlily

This lily grows wild. Not in a cultivated garden but in the clear water of Axsjö, the quiet lake near my village — the still one, undisturbed, where the blossoms drift on the calm surface near the shore.

I drew it in pen and ink, and the subject carries the same tension I keep finding in nature: the flower sways as if longing to float free, while its long stem holds it anchored to the lakebed. Movement and restraint in one plant. That contrast is the whole elegance of it.

Monet made these flowers immortal in his ponds, but mine is a wilder cousin, sketched line by line from life. Sitting by the lake watching them move with the ripples calms something in me — a quiet reminder to notice beauty and let it be still.

An original pen-and-ink drawing. Signed.

Jolanta