I sit on a hotel’s tile balcony, halfway to my destination. The midday sun lies hot on stucco walls and tile roofs. Between the buildings I see a sliver of sea; across the bay, a spine of green-sided mountains cuts the sky. Around me gulls call. All colors here are bright, clear, and strong: white like bleached bone, green the color of cactus, tiles brick-red, and the sea as blue as only blue can be described. Blue.
I am on my way from Barcelona to Arles, France, where Vincent van Gogh spent two of his final three years. In Arles he famously went mad, cut off part of his ear, and finally checked himself into an insane asylum in St. Remy de Provence, fifteen minutes to the north. In this region, also, he painted many of his best-known works: Sunflowers, The Night Café, Irises, Starry Night. The landscape of the region now surrounding me belonged, and in some sense still belongs, to him, who gave it some of its most memorable and permanent expression.
Vincent van Gogh is a writer’s painter. When I was younger, I struggled to connect to visual art. Paintings felt static and limited to me – they had no words in them. Then, browsing aimlessly in the library one afternoon, I happened upon van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo …
– Read more at the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review