How I love Vincent Van Gogh!

Perhaps it is because our birthdays are only a day apart on the calendar or maybe it is simply my own deep passion for color but I have always loved Vincent Van Gogh.  When I finally had the opportunity in life to study art history, I took multiple classes on impressionism just so I could revel in the beauty of, in my opinion, one of history's most miraculous and misunderstood artists.

My empathic abilities allow me to uniquely comprehend what it must have been like for this poor ginger haired Dutchman, tortured by his ability to see what no one else could.  When I saw the movie Lust For Life, then had the opportunity to stand in front of actual Van Gogh paintings at Carnegie Museum, it became so clear to me what an unbelievable and amazing creature this artist was.  If you have never seen an actual Van Gogh painting, it is quite an unexpected experience.  His paintings are wonderously dimensional; paint globbed on in haphazard texture, bristles forever stuck in the paint, sliced canvas from the artist's dangerously wielded pallet knife, all applied with lightening speed from the fever of a hyper intense creative moment.  With each stroke applied to the canvas, Van Gogh's style lends the reality that he must have feared losing the vision he willed to capture and worked as hurriedly as he could. One can only marvel at that high a level of passion.

Later, in my frequent researching, I discovered interesting facts that better explained the madness behind the brush.  Van Gogh was of course a dreadful addict, possessed by absinthe; the wormwood surely contributed to his ailing health, crazed perceptions and visions.  Additionally, Van Gogh loved the color yellow.  His passion for brilliance would become his undoing. The yellow paint in his day was created with the use of high quantities of lead.  It is known Van Gogh's creative fervor would result in paint spattered everywhere, all over his skin and mouth, breathing in the fumes and surely absorbing dangerous levels of lead, poisoning his system.  A chemically altered wizard, forever lost in his craft, could never survive his own magic.  In his brief 37 years on earth, he managed to paint the most influential art of all time.  My concept of a starry night will forever be touched by him.