As you move in front of this remarkable painting by Karen Gunderson, the light shifts and catches on the painting’s surface exactly as it does when you’re looking at water. Light on water: a miraculous, everyday phenomenon that artists have tried to express for millennia. Gunderson's virtuosic take uses plain black oil paint on linen, materials that couldn’t be more basic. But her brushstrokes, which brilliantly imitate slightly choppy water, form a shifting texture that reflects the room’s glare, normally an annoyance looking at paintings in a museum. With this work, however, you actually want to see the light.

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