Gallery image links with interaction- ideas?

[KLWink]

I’m (very) slowly building a new site for my organization and struggling to figure out how to make an image gallery on the homepage that are linked to pages. Basically, I’m wanting a new and improved version of what our current homepage looks like:

I’d rather find a solution that is native to Theme.co so I have tried to create two rows with two columns and make the background image the picture but I’d really like all four images (cats, dogs, small animals, lost & found) to be the same size and have clickable interaction. Also, if you couldn’t tell, I’m a total amateur. This is only the second site I’ve built- the first being our current site from 5 years ago.
Any advice/guidance would be appreciated!

[KhoMedia]

You need to add an image to the column. You can link that image to a page by clicking the “link” check mark under the image settings. If you go to elements you can see the image element. Just drag and drop it to the column.

[KLWink]

I can’t seem to get the features I’d like just by adding the image to the column. I’d like to add the image and then overlaying text (i.e. “view dogs”) as well as have some color interaction on hover. That’s why I tried to first make the column background the image I’d like, but then I couldn’t figure out how to make the entire column a link and the interaction on hover.