Water lily 2020

Nick Alm made this oil painting, Water Lily, sometime in the twenty-first century. The color palette is subtle, dominated by muted blues and greens, giving the impression of a hazy summer afternoon. This is how art captures a feeling. Up close, you can see the paint is applied in thin, washy layers, allowing the texture of the canvas to peek through. In the lower-left corner, notice how the brushstrokes create these soft, almost blurry edges on the lily pads. It's as if Alm is inviting us to lose ourselves in the scene. The figure seems to emerge from the depths, her dark hair contrasting with the pale flower floating nearby. Alm reminds me of nineteenth-century painters like John Singer Sargent, who also knew how to capture a fleeting moment with such sensitivity. It’s a reminder that art is always in conversation with the past, reinterpreting and reimagining what has come before.