Water Lilies 1914

Monet made this painting of water lilies with oil on canvas, and you can almost feel him outside in his garden. You can just imagine Monet, in his garden at Giverny, trying to capture the light dancing on the water, right? I can totally sympathize, because painting outside is just plain hard. But when it works, when you get those fleeting moments of light and color just right, it’s like magic. The thick strokes of blues and greens and whites – they're not just colors, they're a record of his looking, his trying, his seeing. Look closely at the way he's laid down each stroke, how the colors blend and shift. That shimmering surface – it's a conversation, a dialogue between Monet and the world, and now between you and the painting. And that's what painting is, right? An endless back and forth, across time, between artists, between the artist and the world, and between the artist and you.