Introduction

Art has always felt a little distant to me, almost as if it belonged to a world, I was allowed to look at but never touch. Growing up in Pakistan, art exhibitions were rare, and the ones I did manage to see were mostly online. Even then, I could feel something strange and beautiful happening inside me when I looked at paintings. Colors would blend, shapes would form, and there would be this sudden emotional pull like quiet waves moving inside my chest. But at the same time, I always felt slightly jealous of people who connected deeply with art. I would notice how some viewers stood in front of a painting for long minutes, sometimes even hours, completely lost. They seemed spiritually absorbed, almost transported. I wanted to feel that too, to feel something eternal.

This feeling became even stronger when I watched a scene from The Intouchables. The caretaker jokes about expensive abstract paintings and claims he can make something even better. The paralyzed man plays along, and later gives the caretaker’s random strokes a deep, almost philosophical interpretation so deep that one of his friends ends up buying the piece for millions. This scene bothered me more than I expected. It made me ask: Do we give meaning to art, or does art naturally pull meaning out of us? Does value come from us or from the painting itself?

These questions stayed with me throughout this course. And then something changed when we began studying Impressionism. Slowly, very slowly, things started to make sense.

Discovering Impressionism: The Moment Things Started to Click

Understanding art felt like the moment when you learn to ride a bicycle. For weeks you struggle, wobble, fall, try again. You know the technique—balance, focus, movement—but somehow it never works. And then one day, for no reason at all, it happens. The wheels are steady. Your body balances. You’re moving. Nothing changed, but everything changed.

That is exactly how Impressionism felt to me.

It wasn’t like Renaissance art or traditional miniature paintings that show every detail clearly. It wasn’t like surrealism that shocks you or cubism that confuses you. Impressionism felt like a breath. A moment. A memory. A photograph taken accidentally when the camera shakes slightly, but the picture somehow becomes even more beautiful because of that blur.

The Impressionists wanted to paint things as they appeared in a single fleeting moment, light shifting, colors dissolving, movement happening. Their paintings are like candid photographs taken by the eye before the mind has time to overthink.

Monet’s Water Lilies: The Painting That Finally Spoke to Me

Of all the works we studied, the one that truly reached my deepest core is Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. When I first saw it, it didn’t shout or demand my attention. It slowly pulled me almost like a whisper you lean toward so you don’t miss it.

In Water Lilies, the pond doesn’t look like a pond. The sky reflects in the water, the water reflects the lilies, the lilies float above colors, colors melt into each other. Nothing is drawn with perfect lines. Everything is alive, moving quietly. It feels like you are standing beside the pond at a moment when the world has paused. Just light, water, and breath.

What amazes me is how Monet takes something ordinary like water and flowers and turns it into something spiritual. His brushstrokes are loose but intentional; his colors are soft but layered. He paints how the world feels, not how it looks. And maybe that is why this painting connects with me so deeply. It gives me space to breathe. It gives me silence. It gives me freedom.

Whenever I look at it, I feel like a bird flying freely in an open sky, without barriers, without expectations. Just movement and light.

Why Monet’s Approach Matters: Claude Monet as an Impressionist

Before this course, I had only heard Monet’s name. But learning about him the way he chased sunlight, how he painted the same scene dozens of times at different hours, how he painted outside with real air, real wind, real reflections, made me appreciate Water Lilies even more.

Impressionists faced criticism. People said their paintings were unfinished, messy, childish. But they weren’t trying to paint reality. They were trying to paint experience. Monet especially was obsessed with capturing what the eye sees before the mind translates it. That is why Impressionism feels like a candid photograph; natural, unposed, honest.

Learning this helped me understand why Water Lilies felt so alive to me. Monet wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was trying to share the world as he felt it.

Other Impressionist Works We Studied — And How They Helped Me Connect to Monet

Studying Monet alone wouldn’t have given me the full picture. It was through the other Impressionist works we studied in class that I slowly built a deeper understanding.

Berthe Morisot – The Cradle

Morisot showed me tenderness. In The Cradle, the mother softly watches her baby sleeping. The brushstrokes are gentle; the atmosphere is warm. It feels like a private moment, almost like looking into someone’s heart. The blurriness is not a weakness; it is softness. A kind of love that is too delicate to be drawn with sharp lines.

This helped me appreciate Monet’s softness even more. Impressionism is not about precision; it is about emotion.

Edgar Degas – L’ Absinthe

Degas showed me loneliness. In Absinthe, the woman sits with an empty expression, surrounded by noise but completely isolated. The painting feels like a candid photograph of sadness captured without preparation, without posing. This painting helped me understand how Impressionists didn’t hide human emotions. They showed life the way it feels.

This made me see Water Lilies as a different kind of emotion not sadness, but calm.

Édouard Manet – A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Manet showed me complexity. The barmaid looks right at us, but her reflection doesn’t match her face. The painting feels like standing in a crowded place but being mentally somewhere else. The use of mirrors, light, and slightly distorted perspective made me realize how Impressionism was not just “pretty paintings.” It was thoughtful. Philosophical.

When I went back to Water Lilies after studying Manet, I saw more depth in it more layers, more intention behind the reflections.

A visit to Galleries

All the classroom learning gave me the foundation. But it was our visits to Gulgee Gallery and Faizan Riedinger’s gallery that gave me the emotional push I needed.

At the Gulgee Gallery, I saw how colors can explode on canvas without any clear form yet still communicate movement, strength, and emotion. Gulgee’s strokes reminded me of Monet’s freedom. That looseness. That trust in the hand. That belief that the paint will speak.

At Faizan Riedinger’s gallery, the experience was even more intimate. His paintings made me pause and really think. They demanded emotional honesty from me. The textures, the shadows, the color transitions made me realize how much an artist can communicate without words.

It was in these galleries that something clicked:
Art requires presence. Art requires patience. Art requires you to slow down and feel.

This made me revisit Monet not as a student fulfilling an assignment but as someone truly meeting a painting.

Why Are Water Lilies Loudest Among These?

Even after seeing all these works, Water Lilies remains the painting that resonates with me the most. And I think I finally know why.

It gives me calm.
It gives me softness.
It gives me a world where nothing is harsh or rigid.

In a life full of noise, deadlines, anxieties, and constant movement, Water Lilies gives me a quiet moment where the world pauses, and I can breathe.

It teaches me that beauty doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers.
It teaches me that art doesn’t need to be understood immediately. Sometimes it needs to be felt slowly.
It teaches me that meaning is not a fixed thing. It flows like water. It shifts like light.

And most importantly, it teaches me that the emotional reaction inside me is not “less than” what others feel. It is my own connection, valid and real.

Conclusion

This course didn’t just introduce me to Impressionism; it taught me how to see. It gave me the language, the patience, and the courage to stand in front of art and let it speak to me. Monet’s Water Lilies may not be the loudest painting, but it is the one that changed something inside me. It feels like a quiet moment of freedom, a breath of fresh air, a candid memory painted on water.

I finally understand why people stand in front of paintings for so long.
Because sometimes, in a world full of chaos, a painting gives you a moment of peace.

And for me, that moment was found among Monet’s lilies, floating gently on a pond of shifting light.