Waterloo Bridge, Overcast Weather 1901

This is Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, Overcast Weather, painted around the turn of the 20th century with oil on canvas. Look at how the pink sky fights for space with the heavy blue bridge, Monet’s mark-making here feels so instinctive, so process-driven. It's funny, you know, the way Monet builds up the surface with all these little strokes and jabs of color. There’s a real materiality to it - like he’s wrestling the paint into submission. Take a look at the lower portion of the bridge, there are dabs of pink that disrupt the blue, the thick application of paint almost feels like an act of defiance, or an attempt to create the feeling of constant change. Monet was always chasing the light, trying to catch these fleeting moments. You see something of that searching quality in the late work of Turner, who was also interested in how light could dissolve form. These paintings aren’t about the finished product, but about the messy, beautiful struggle to capture something that’s always slipping away.