Water Lilies 1906

Claude Monet made this painting of water lilies with oil on canvas, though we can't be sure exactly when. Just look at the color! It is so light and airy, almost like you could dive right in. Up close you can see how Monet applied the paint in these tiny, little strokes. You can almost see him standing there, dabbing the canvas over and over. The way the colors blend together is so cool, it feels more like a process than a picture. There's one spot near the bottom where the lilies are pink, those little dots of color, just floating there, that make the whole thing sing. I see a connection here to the later work of someone like Joan Mitchell, in how she uses color and brushwork to build up these amazing surfaces. It really makes you think about how art is just one big conversation, with artists building on each other's ideas across time. You know, art doesn't always have to make perfect sense. It's more about the feeling, the mood, that comes over you.