Loved “Loving Vincent”

Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters and the recent film Loving Vincent done in his honor certainly paid it’s respects.

The film was the world’s first oil paint animated feature film and the imagery was so beautiful it was hard to keep track of the story.

Before this film, I knew him only as a cold historical figure. Afterwards, I felt like had lived a moment in his world.

That is what art does I guess.

He began painting at 28 and died 8 years later, having created over 2100 pieces of art including over 850 oil paintings! He only sold 1 of them in his lifetime.

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”

If he was anything, he was passionate about life and everything in it.

I’ve always wondered how great artists are able to pull us deeper into life and see things that most people don’t. Vincent would probably say it is by being oneself, admiring what is beautiful, loving fully, feeling deeply, waiting patiently.

“I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.”

“It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”

“I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”

“I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say ‘he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.”

“It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.”

He struggled, like all of us do, wondering whether his life had any meaning. I think he ultimately found solace in the fact that he couldn’t please everyone.

He couldn’t pass the tests to be a pastor like his dad. He was a failed missionary. His God given duty was to be who God made him to be.

“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”