All the color that moves
“Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and gray, look out on a summer’s day, with eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils, catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land.
Vincent van Gogh was born on this day, March 30, 1853. I have heard him described as mad, a genius, confused, brilliant and mentally ill. Perhaps he was all of this. Vincent came from an upper middle class, religious family. He worked at many things in his short life but didn’t settle down to become a full-time painter until his late twenties
“Starry, starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze, reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue. Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain, weathered faces lined in pain, are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.”
Many impressionist painters of that time worked outside in nature trying to capture the moment. I think that Vincent was trying to do this too. But outside, things are always in motion, the light changes, the clouds move and the trees sway. The color and the textures flow and swirl around the canvas, there is always the sense of movement in Vincent’s paintings and it seems like he is always trying to keep up with it all. It is never ‘still life.’
“Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls, frame-less heads on nameless walls, with eyes that watch the world and can’t forget. Like the strangers that you’ve met, the ragged men in ragged clothes, the silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.”
Like any creative person, there is a great deal of frustration in trying to achieve your vision. The song that does not play just right, the novel that doesn’t quite read the way you wanted, the painting that doesn’t match that inner vision of your mind’s eye.
“For they could not love you, but still your love was true, and when no hope was left in sight, on that starry, starry night, you took your life, as lovers often do. But I could’ve told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”
As an artist myself, I have sometimes had to deal with the mental frustration of trying to get things right and achieve a more perfect vision of my ideas. It can be quite emotionally debilitating, it can easily wear you down and it can really mess with your mind if you are not careful.
“Now I understand what you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity and how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how, perhaps they’ll listen now.”
Vincent took his own life in July, 1890. In just over 10 years, he created more then 2,100 pieces of art, 860 of those were paintings that are now some of the most sought-after art in the world.
(Don Mclean wrote this wonderful tribute song about Vincent van Gogh in 1971 that never fails to move me. This portrait of Vincent was taken during my visit to the National Gallery in Washington DC last spring. It is another one of his paintings that the colors simply will not hold still.)
