Finding Hope with van Gogh
“...I feel of late a certain power of colour awakening in me, stronger and different from what I have felt till now.”
Noon Zinnias in a Windstorm—Oil Sketch, Richmond, CA, October 2021
Dear Theo,
Over the course of his life, Vincent van Gogh wrote approximately 900 letters of which several hundred were to his brother Theo. Here he is writing to Theo from The Hague in early August 1883. Within this letter he is writing about a recent painting of a rainy day, “showing a man on a wet, muddy road…,” saying that the painting is, in his words, “better” because it is finally expressing something. As of this letter, that something is unknown to the reader, but I love how van Gogh thoughtfully goes on to explain that after working through some illness and anxiety something new emerges—color. This new way of working, he says, is like, “looking through the eyelashes.” Instead of concentrating on the structure of things, he is seeing the world in patches of color.
“Reading his letters, the rambling thoughts of an unwell, but sometimes well man, I am inspired not only to think but to deeply feel. ”
This letter, like all of his letters, is deeply personal. Reading his letters, the rambling thoughts of an unwell, but sometimes well man, I am inspired not only to think but to deeply feel. My scholarly side wants to continue to learn about where, when, and how these letters and related paintings were created, applying the laser focus that I learned in school. It’s my comfort zone. However, you can drown in a sea of scholarship about this painter. So, no, not necessary. Rather, I am trying to connect to the feeling that van Gogh might have felt with some honesty and find a little hope again in my own work.
Noon Zinnias–Painting Detail
Yours, Vincent
“Though it is nothing but a few patches of color,” Vincent tells Theo, there is something mysterious about looking at nature in this way, as outlines with “blots of color.” Time must pass over it, he says, and there is more work to be done (van Gogh will produce nearly 1000 paintings in the decade before his death). He notes after prolonged contemplation, “I am hopeful again.” This simple admission brings up the urge in me to be contemplative too. I have a very personal connection to his work. From visiting his painting, Undergrowth with Two Figures in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum to visiting this artist’s extensive collection at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, his work has marked my own curiosity about painting and art-making. I also know that there is an over-proliferation of material on his life and work. To the point that he has become a myth and a metaphor for the sad, short life of a painter. I want to refuse this trope. I want to think of van Gogh as always searching for joy. He found joy like I find joy—in the pure physical experience of color. He, like me and many others, are awed by the phenomenon of it. All I can do is describe my own experience: Dear, Theo, I study the zinnias at noon through my eyelashes, to see a red so red, and feel their movement in the windstorm on a red-flag day that threatens to shut off our power. I am painting in my garden. I am signing this blog the way van Gogh signed his letters during this time, “with a handshake in thought. Yours, Vincent” and admitting to a feeling, I am hopeful again too.