when Van Gogh speaks to you

I've been putting off starting this new series since the completion of my last. It takes time to gather imagery, materials and create a plan to bring them both together, not to mention finding spare time to start the process once again (once you start painting it's easy to put time aside for it because that's the fun part), but all it takes is one thing to get you going.

Last night after dinner we couldn't find anything to watch, except for a hockey game and after a lot of perusing we found a documentary about the life/work of Vincent Van Gogh called
Van Gogh:Brush with Genius. The narrator of the movie spoke as Vincent Van Gogh who looked into the life of an art historian, a film maker and himself. Imagery of the many locations that Van Gogh created in and about were accompanied by his actual paintings. I never knew he created hundreds of paintings within a year, even a couple hundred within the span of just a few months (sometimes 3 a day). He talked about his work and ideas through letters that he wrote to his brother: ideas about color (by putting complimentary colors near each other it makes both colors appear more vibrant) and composition (by painting the horizon line near the top of the canvas the viewer is able to become enveloped into the foreground of the painting). I know I learned this all in school, but there was just something about it that clicked (I think it was hearing him talk about his own work, or so it seemed) and made me want to start painting again while also paying close attention to these ideas and how I can incorporate them into my own paintings. He also talked about the process that it took for him to in a sense find his own style. Definitely things to think about, and think about some more.

If Van Gogh painted 3 paintings in one day, I better get going.

Comments

Post a Comment