Wacky ARTIST Wednesday {or Manic Artist Monday on a Wednesday} - Van Gogh

With the holidays hot on my heels, I don't seem to know what day it is - but I didn't want to wait until after the holidays to resume these fun posts. So welcome to "Manic Artist Monday" on a WACKY WEDNESDAY. This is where I share some interesting tidbits on some of the great masters in art history.

Today's selection is one of the most well known artists, Vincent van Gogh. Above is a photo of myself and my completed street painting reproduction of "Fishing Boats", 1888 by van Gogh. This was at the annual "Lake Worth Street Painting Festival" - which I have participated in for 15+ years. Painting in pastels on the asphalt is a challenge and I love to select paintings that are of the Impressionist era to immortalize on the pavement.

This dutch post-impressionist painted using bold strokes and colors. Vincent van Gogh was a master of capturing light - albeit day or night - especially of the night.

Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh is also one of the artists featured in the book "Secret Lives of Great Artists" - not only because he experience bouts of mental illness and died at the age of 37, which is quite young, but might have very well been as a result from eating paint from the tube. Vincent suffered from depression, some say schizophrenia, perhaps bi-polar disorder - yet his paintings capture his surroundings in bright, colorful detail with such passion and obsessive purpose - painting subjects such as wheat fields, and sunflowers over and over. His short artistic career only spanned about 10 years, starting out with bleak, dull-colored and somber subjects which evolved into vivid beautiful masterpieces; the most famous being "Starry, Starry, Night.

Van Gogh Museum as seen from the Museumplein.

I have traveled to the Netherlands which is the home of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It's beautiful modern architecture sits adjacent and in stark contrast to the historical Rijks Museum; and contains a large collection of this masters work, his letters and works of his contemporaries.

Vincent went from one problem to the next, never seeming to catch a break. Most people know of van Gogh because of a single event - that he cut off a portion of his ear and presented it to a woman, a prostitute at a brothel. The series of events that transpired over the two days before Christmas of 1888, resulting in this stunt are only know by van Gogh and Paul Gauguin - and neither man ever spoke of it. They never met again.

Here's a few of my favorite quotes by Vincent van Gogh and these are quite profound.

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of the stars makes me dream."

"I dream of painting, then I paint my dream."

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange. "

If you would like to know more about Vincent van Gogh, CLICK HERE to read his wikipedia entry.

I hope you find this interesting, intriguing and inspiring. In honor of the holidays the next two weeks, please look for my installments of Wacky Artist Wednesday {or MANIC ARTIST MONDAY on a Wednesday}. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! 

:) Sb