Water Lily Pond, Evening (left panel) 1926

This is one panel of Claude Monet's Water Lily Pond, Evening. Just imagine Monet, later in life, still at it, trying to capture something so fleeting and ephemeral. I see strokes of blues and greens swirling with dabs of red and strokes of gold. It's a pond, but it's also a dance of light and color. I wonder what it was like for him, standing there, trying to pin down the light with paint? Did he feel like he was wrestling with something? I know that feeling. The way the yellow kind of eats up space, with the blues clinging to the top. It’s like he’s trying to paint a feeling, an experience, more than just what he sees. He’s in conversation with other painters, with Turner and Delacroix. A never-ending exchange of ideas across time, pushing each other forward, trying to get at something that’s always just out of reach. That’s what painting is, after all. It’s an embodied expression which embraces ambiguity.