Visual perception is a function of our eyes and our brain. We see images as a whole rather than in parts. However, images can be broken into their visual elements: line, shape, texture, and color. These elements are to images as grammar is to language. They, together, allow our eyes to see images and our brain to recognize those objects. This is a compare and contrast essay between the works of Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. French-born Post-Impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), and the French-born Claude Monet (1840-1926), both painted vibrant and expressive paintings during the twentieth century. In this case, the chosen paintings are Van Gogh's "Flowering Orchard" (1888) and Monet's "The Four Trees" (1891).
             Both of these compositions are paintings. The orchard in Van Gogh's painting is dominated by the rich, red-brown tree growing in the foreground, reaching out and upward with delicate, searching branches; all of which give the flowering orchard an emerald expanse of grass carpeting the ground expression. In Monet's case, the four trees were created solely with the use of layered similar colors close to each other and a very random synthetist outline technique (a similar technique the post-impressionist painter Gaugin used). Both of these paintings are created using oil paints on canvas. The most important element that draws their work away from the mainstream is their heavy application of paint. Although they both apply their colors liberally, Van Gogh's adopts a style of choppy brushstrokes of brilliant colors, and for the most part, are random. His brushstrokes are also particularly long, whereas Monet's are short and swift. Van Gogh uses bright, pure colors to heighten the expressiveness of his work. And like Monet, the strokes blend together and the texture appears mottled, providing the painting with its three-dimensional background. Color is of equal importance in both pieces as it draws the viewer...