The Japanese Bridge 5 1924

Monet built this Japanese bridge with oil paint, layering strokes of red, yellow, orange, and purple. I can imagine Monet squinting his eyes, trying to capture the light as it flickers on the water, on the bridge, on the leaves. He’s not trying to give us a photograph. He wants to convey the fleeting impression, the shimmering atmosphere. He's not telling us what to see, but showing us how to see. He's all about the process, about the act of painting itself, a constant back and forth between what he sees and how he feels. Look at how he uses these little dashes of paint to build up the surface. It’s almost sculptural, like he’s building a world right there on the canvas. You can almost feel the sun on your skin, the coolness of the water, just from the way he puts those colors together. He did so many paintings of his gardens, and you can see him going deeper and deeper into his own way of seeing.