He became, somehow, obsessed by yellow, so that if you google him in images, the page, from a distance, looks like a acre of June's finest dandelions. Raised in an especially religious home, an eccentric religious home in Holland, Vincent Van Gogh, after a fashion, dropped his religion but not his own--or his father's--religiosity when he moved to Paris and, at the suggestion of his brother Theo, became an artist. He'd been no child prodigy. Suddenly, it seemed, he discovered color. This morning his vivid yellow dreams are a special blessing because it's been a week at least since, out here at the edge of the plains, we've had little more than a passing glimpse of the sun, the temps cold as ice. Yesterday, early morning, a new sheet of ice and snow all over. Check him out.
What he's left us is the closest we've had to sweet weather for a long, long time. And that's ironic, I suppose, since Vincent's own brooding gloominess, assessed today as bi-polar, left him in darkness for too many days when, I suppose, his only hope was in those bright and shiny yellows he chose to fill his canvas. When he died, by his own hand, in July of 1890, he thought himself a miserable failure, which, again ironically, may well supply fuel to his strange and tragic story and also to the brightness that rises from those glorious yellows he so deeply loved.
"What am I in the eyes of most people -- a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person -- somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then -- even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart."And he has shown exactly that, vividly, in an array of bright yellows. Few artists' work is so universally loved.
Today is his birthday.
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Yesterday we enjoyed reading about the continuing blessings and resurection joy of Mother Teresa's life, as she "fought off the plague of emotional darkness." Today we celebrate the birth day and life of a young man born in an affluent Dutch Reformed home in Holland. Imagine beginning one's life in the presence of a tombstone with your own name inscribed upon it. The image of his deceased, stillborn brother's tombstone must have followed him throughout his brief life. I spent several hours on Wikipedia exploring the life and art of Vincent Van Gogh. Wouldn't it be an enriching challenge to study and compare the lives of Mother Teresa and Vincent Van Gogh? The bright blue sky and warm sunshine continue to cover our radiant, towering Red Rocks. Thanks again "Prof."
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