Van Gogh, An Exhilerating Reunion

     

Another Van Gogh landscape, Farm House With Two Figures, that had escaped me when first I fell in love with him umpteen number of years ago as a kid. It's really quite a study in greens WITH THE EXCEPTION of the red oxide, or similar,  chimney. How shocking these paintings must have been in the eighteen hundreds? How boring were the  folks who called themselves art connoisseurs that they weren't exhilarated by such exuberance?  To see Van Gogh genius for yourself go to http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/landscapes.html. 

Stumbling into Van Gogh again woke me up.  I had to get back to my paints.  It didn't matter what I painted. I just wanted to paint something. I grabbed a photo, a little canvas panel and jumped in while Bob Seager rocked. My left leg moved along with the right to the music. It would have been a totally delightful couple of hours if I had chosen to jump into acrylics instead of oils. The little oil painting ended the session. It needed to rest, to sit, to dry. What a lucky break, so did I.

While icing away my recklessness, I returned to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterday's website and looked through  their collection.  I thought that I had seen everything that Van Gogh had painted. When an exhibit was here at the DIA, a block away from my art college, I was there everyday standing in front of each painting in awe.  I worked the show slowly, savoring each exhibit. It was a large impressive show--put together during the DIA's heyday. I was naive enough to figure I had seen all there was to see of VG. I came away from the show knowing the man could really draw and wasn't just a percoscious guy wildly tossing around brushfuls of color.  I did fall in love. (Haven't we all)?  I bought the books and devoured them months after the exhibit moved on.  Now, I discovered I have to go to Amsterdam to see the whole story from start to finish.   

This painting, an early one I'm guessing, convinced me.

After downloading the image, I couldn't find it again to get the particulars. I combed through the collection three times, but it was gone, a fluke find from the past.  What I did notice however were the great number of paintings he did with a monochromatic palette of browns-- umbra, sienna--and when you look at his paintings one after the other, you discover what I didn't see as a young girl: his palette was never extensive.  Smart move.  --And all this discovery and call to brushes came via downloading a free puzzle app. Amazing how life pushes us around. Richard Bach knew what he was talking about.

Linda's Title:  Waiting At The Station in Le Havre. If you know it, please pass it on.

Carpenter's Yard and Laundry--an amazing amount of detail for a Van Gogh

Farmhouses-in-Loosduinen near the Hague at Twight--talk about being specific with your titles!