Erosion of Time: The Cathedral Above and Below

Claude Monet’s  Church at Varengeville, Morning Effect (1882) captures a moment where light and landscape merge, a place where permanence meets the transience of time. The church, perched high upon the cliffs of Normandy, stands as a quiet sentinel, observing the shifting tides below. Monet, ever the master of light, painted this structure not as a monument of solidity but as a vessel for atmosphere—where the morning glow touches stone, grass, and sky in equal measure, dissolving edges, softening the tangible world into something ethereal. 

In this surreal reinterpretation, that tension between permanence and impermanence is taken further. The cliff, once a firm foundation, appears to erode into cascading streaks of color, as if bleeding into the water below. The grand church above stands as a beacon of history, faith, and endurance, yet its reflection below is something altogether different—an echo of a cityscape, vertical forms stretching downward into the water, as though time itself is unraveling the past, replacing it with something modern, something unknowable. 

The boundary between land and water is no longer clear. The cliffs dissolve into hues of fiery reds, deep umbers, and soft golds, suggesting an earth that is no longer stable, a foundation that is slipping. These colors, warmer and more intense than Monet’s original palette, evoke not just light but transformation—a world caught between states, the familiar becoming something unfamiliar. The water below, instead of offering a serene reflection, distorts and reinvents the scene, suggesting a mirrored reality that is not quite the same. 

Hints of cyan and blue weave through the right side of the composition, almost like digital glitches disrupting an organic world. They speak of interference, of time colliding, of something that does not belong yet insists on being part of the narrative. This contrast between the rich warmth of the cliffs and the cool, synthetic tones suggests an inevitable shift—a future creeping into the past, rewriting it before our eyes. 

As an artist, my intention with this reinterpretation was to explore the fragility of history. Monet painted the  Church at Varengeville as a structure grounded in its environment, capturing the way light defined its presence. But here, I wanted to ask: What happens when the ground beneath it is no longer certain? The cliffs crumble, not in a single moment of destruction, but in a slow erosion, a blending of past into present, stone into water, permanence into transience. 

The vertical cityscape appearing beneath the church is deliberate—it is not simply a reflection but a question. Are we looking at a city emerging from the depths, or one being swallowed? Does the past dissolve into the present, or does it persist in a new form, altered but still recognizable? Monet’s Impressionism was about capturing fleeting moments, yet here, that fleeting nature has been extended beyond light and into time itself. 

Water has always been a central theme in Monet’s works, a surface that both reflects and distorts. In this piece, water is no longer a passive element—it is active, consuming, reshaping. The brushstrokes of the cliffs melt into it, colors seeping downward, memory dissolving. The presence of modern textures—subtle digital overlays, abstracted urban forms—suggests that even the landscapes Monet once immortalized are not immune to change. 

This piece speaks to the delicate balance between history and progress, between preservation and evolution. The church, still standing above, remains a beacon—but for how long? And below, the new structures rise, uncertain and unfamiliar. The world Monet painted is not lost, but it is changing, and in that change, we must ask: Do we mourn what is disappearing, or embrace what is coming into being?