Starry Night…
Posted on | April 13, 2010 | 3 Comments
Van Gogh’s Starry Night had been one of her favorite paintings since childhood. In grade seven, she remembered having to recreate the painting with torn pieces of construction paper. Another project was to recreate the painting by drawing it in white glue and then watercoloring over the dried glue. She knew her mother had kept them both and they were probably turning to dust somewhere, but just the memory of it alone was enough to sustain her feeling of having accomplished something great.
Apparently she wasn’t the only one in her family who appreciated Van Gogh’s work. Her half brother (on her Father’s side) also was very fond of Van Gogh. But she didn’t realize this until after his funeral. He was the passenger in a motor vehicle accident just two days after Mother’s day and just a couple days before his 19th birthday. When her stepmother redecorated his room, she had several Van Gogh prints framed beautifully around the room, and that was when she’d found out her little brother had been a fan. How much she didn’t know about this life cut short too soon.
She never claimed to know much about art. She just knew what she liked. She knew that many different types of art appealed to her. From Van Gogh to “modern art”, her collection varied widely and passionately. A gift just framed was a photograph of lichen growing on an old iron gate. A prized possession, a painting of birds on wires which reminded her of Mom. She had collected things throughout the years that called to her. She didn’t have huge amounts of money to spend but she had bought a couple pieces at the right time and had a few that were now worth some money. It didn’t matter, she wasn’t selling.
But Van Gogh…oh Van Gogh. Troubled. She wondered if he was troubled as she often was. She looked at his brushstrokes (the best one can looking at a print, how she’d love to visit a museum and see one of his actual masterpieces) and thought of her brain and of her thoughts and wondered if his brain was like that too. She imagined what beautiful works he would have produced had he lived longer than his mental illness allowed. How very, very sad. She was frustrated that he was another one that was so brilliant, so talented, yet so ill and that always took a back seat. A lot of brilliant people were ill. She was ill. She was trying to get better though. She didn’t want to cut off an ear or anything else. That was a good thing she thought…
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3 Responses to “Starry Night…”
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April 13th, 2010 @ 5:19 pm
I’d like to comment on this…because I can. More of a clarification. When I look at a Van Gogh painting and the brushstrokes, I imagine each stroke as a thought…and lots of them. Like when I look at a Monet I see a LOT of thoughts lol. To me, Starry night is a way I feel sometimes…swishy and beautiful and this is sounding more and more like an LSD trip than anything so perhaps I should stop this clarification right here…
April 13th, 2010 @ 5:54 pm
ZG, your last “Rambling” spoke to me. I’ve always been a lover of Van Gogh’s work… and most all the artists of his time. I always think about his brushstrokes. A professor of mine called them “frenied brushstrokes” and for some reason this always comes to mind when I think of Van Gogh or speak of him to my own students. I think his brush strokes were something of an extension of his frenzied, colorful, yet anguished life. His paintings make you “feel” the way he felt at the time he struggled with them. And I do think he struggled with his paintings just as he did in life.
But without struggle, what is the purpose?
April 13th, 2010 @ 11:42 pm
I make light, often, of the struggle that I go through myself. I make fun, but I wonder who I would be if I were not the “me” who struggles?