Starry Night painting by Vincent
Me and Vincent is just an insight to a bigger picture I am trying to paint. Vincent, as used here is to describe a person who is, in my words "gifted yet challenged". Most of the articles on this page relate to creativity etc and its links to some form of mental illness. It's interesting that most people who have pushed the limits and invented something (music, ideas, plays, engineering feats etc etc) have in some way been "strange" or "different". This is because you have to be this way to think of new things, only the dull and boring think of nothing, 99% of people are like this so it is no wonder that us creative minded people are call different.
I found this interesting, a letter by Vincent written to his brother, something I have often said this to myself since I was younger.
Vincent like myself, and like many other thinking, eccentric minds seemed to have a mental condition, all those years of outcasting, the black dog took his last bite and took Vincent away, a great artist yes, but in his day sold only 1 artwork, he was then a nobody, he was then an eccentric.
Letter to Theo, July 21, 1882 (age 29)
"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 never will 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." -Vincent Van Gogh
Also a quote from Vincent
"It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill - it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy."
Read the other chapters on this page to really understand what it is like to be artistic, inventive or just a thinker!
Great song below about Vincent
Song Lyrics to Starry Starry Night by Don Mclean
Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.
Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.
For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.
Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...
