Dear, Vincent

"I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.'

-Vincent van Gogh

i think of how you were once told that only in madness could someone hold so much pain, and so much joy in one paintbrush. i too try to create art out of my pain. Some masterpieces come from trembling hands. Sometimes art is creating beauty where it feels the most absent.

I think of you giving up your own flesh to a stranger, a frightening gesture. But don't we all give up unwanted parts of ourselves to others? The messy parts that we no longer want. Giving up a part of ourselves and calling it a gift, not such a foreign gesture anymore.

Did you make your ear disappear so the voices would finally come to a silence? Did your illness become your genius? Maybe starry night came from a swirling mind.

Did you consume paint to become an internalized piece of art? There must be such a depth of pain, to come to the point of trying to find different means of an end.

There is such mystery and beauty in trying to find the beauty in the pain and when you can't find it, that's when you create it. Such a command of color sometimes comes from a bit of darkness. It takes a skilled mind to transform crippling pain into ecstatic beauty.

You did not simply put your pain into your art. You transformed your pain into a vibrant beauty, a complete contradiction. To capture the ecstasy of joy in our world and to create pure art out of it, is a type of magic.

More than ninety-nine paintings and only one sold. Until the future. And so many people see such sadness in that. But what I understand, is that we all think we are nothing some point in our lives, now look at the impact Van Goghs art has made on our world. No one else has created art like that.

Many people see this story as a sad one, although it was a sad ending. I do not see it as a sad story, I see beauty and a dichotomy between pain and art. Transforming the ashes into meaning. Just because we do not understand something does not mean it is not art, just because we don't understand someone does not mean they are not a masterpiece. Everyone is a different form of art. As creatives and artists we have the ability to do something about our pain, we can make art out of hurt and turn it into a form of beauty.

You are art and you are a masterpiece not everyone will understand. What I take from Vincent's pieces is that there is so much color in this world, not everything is grey. Yes, there is trauma, hurt, and personal pain but we must learn to find the beauty, to create it. Everyone has their own kind of art. Art never dies. The art lives on, so does his beautiful mind.

"Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. "

- A.S.

find your muse, find your art.