Dissolving Horizons: The Edge of Memory

Claude Monet’s  La Pointe de la Hève, Sainte-Adresse (1864) captures the shifting atmosphere of the Normandy coastline, where sky and sea meet in a delicate play of light and movement. His early Impressionist strokes sought to dissolve rigid forms into fluid sensation, creating a world where land, water, and air exist not as separate entities but as interconnected elements of a fleeting moment. The scene is not just about the landscape but about perception itself—how light alters reality, how the ocean is never truly still. 

This abstract-impressionist reinterpretation takes Monet’s concept further, breaking apart the solidity of the scene into fragments of memory and erosion. The horizon is no longer a fixed point but a drifting boundary, blurred by the weight of time. The sky, once open and expansive, now carries the textures of age—torn paper, weathered ink, layers of charcoal mist that seem to peel away like remnants of forgotten history. The sea, too, is restless, its surface now a mixture of Monet’s soft blues and a darker, inky abyss, where outlines dissolve into washes of diluted pigment. 

A small boat, once a mere detail in Monet’s composition, now emerges as a spectral presence, its occupants barely distinguishable, caught between movement and stillness. Their journey is uncertain—not towards a destination but through a moment that feels both immediate and distant. The water around them reflects a sky that no longer exists, a mirror of something fragmented, shifting, slipping between worlds. 

The left side of the image is dominated by abstract textures—scraped paint, raw earth tones, and pale pink traces that feel like echoes of something once written, now erased. These marks suggest that the past is never truly gone; it lingers beneath the surface, seeping into the composition like the slow fade of a dream upon waking. The clouds overhead take on the form of something more than just vapor—they are layers of thought, of memory, of time unraveling. 

Color plays a crucial role in defining this transformation. Monet’s original palette of soft blues and warm earth tones remains, but it is now overlaid with washes of muted sepia and ghostly grays. The black ink-like formations intrude upon the softness, suggesting forces beyond human control—erosion, decay, the slow breakdown of structure into something more fluid, more uncertain. The presence of pale pinks and delicate white strokes offers a contrast, a whisper of warmth amid the fading landscape, a reminder that even within dissolution, there is light. 

As an artist, my intention with this piece was to explore how places do not just exist in time but within layers of perception. Monet painted La Pointe de la Hève as a scene in flux, where weather and tide shaped the coast with each passing moment. Here, that flux is extended beyond the physical world into something psychological, something that feels like memory breaking apart and reforming. The landscape is no longer just a place—it is an impression, a half-remembered experience, a reflection of how time alters what we see and what we hold onto. 

The figures in the boat drift toward an unknown horizon, caught between sky and water, between past and present. The land erodes, the clouds dissolve, and the sea continues its endless motion. The question is not whether the scene will remain, but how it will be remembered—distorted by time, shaped by the mind, lingering in the space between clarity and forgetting.