Houses of Parliament, Fog Effect 1901

Claude Monet made this painting of the Houses of Parliament with oil on canvas. It's all soft lilacs, mauves, and hazy grays, like memory itself. I can almost feel what it was like for Monet to stand there, squinting into the fog, trying to capture the way the light was eating the buildings. I wonder if he was frustrated? Or maybe he was just happily lost in the process of trying to mix the right color, or the specific hue, something that would match what he was seeing. Look at how the brushstrokes are laid down, short and broken. They are like visual stutters, attempts to grasp something fleeting. The buildings are almost dissolving, like ghosts. It reminds me of Turner, another painter obsessed with light and atmosphere. It's like they are both chasing the same elusive feeling, trying to pin down the ephemeral. Painting is such a conversation, isn’t it? Artists talking to each other across time, through color and form and feeling.