Sun Impression is a 9 × 6‑inch plein air pastel painting created on a winter morning at my home in Northern California. The rising sun cast soft, shifting colors across the landscape, and I painted quickly to capture the fleeting light. This piece was inspired by Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise, the painting that gave Impressionism its name. Like Monet, I focused on the immediacy of the moment—the glow, the atmosphere, and the emotional impression rather than strict detail.