17 Mile Drive 1918

Rose O'Neill's oil on canvas painting "17 Mile Drive" captures a dreamy coastal scene. Look at how O’Neill builds the landscape with loose, gestural brushstrokes. There’s no hard edge here, just soft transitions where forms meet and blend. Up close, you can see the physical texture of the paint. Notice the way she layers strokes of blues, greens, and browns to suggest the movement of the water and the shifting sands. In the upper left of the painting, the dark smudge of trees looks like a wall. This adds a bit of weight to the composition and emphasizes the atmospheric quality of the scene, like it could be a memory. O’Neill's approach reminds me of Impressionist painters like Monet, who were also interested in capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. There's something so appealing about art that embraces ambiguity over fixed meanings.