In early 2026, at the “INTO THE MODERN” Impressionist exhibition in Singapore, I stood before an original Monet for the first time.

Layers of pigment were stacked high, brushstrokes clearly visible, as if freezing a moment of shimmering dawn or fading dusk from a century ago. At that moment, my mind drifted back to a quiet Sunday exactly ten years prior (2016). I was sitting in front of a computer, flipping through images on the screen one by one, selecting paintings to present for my art class. The theme was “From Tradition to Modernity.” At that time, the word “Impressionism” was still foreign to me, and I could never have imagined that one day I would come face to face with these masterpieces that had once only existed for me as pixels.