Eye in the Sky Found in Darkness: Inspired by Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”
Acrylic on canvas
From a life of observation, I’ve noticed that much of life is rooted in polarizations: woman/man, right/wrong, us/them, on/off, you/ me, night/day. And we, as people, get so caught up in one side or an other, we lose sight of the beauty that unfolds when opposites collide. And that’s what draws me to Vincent Van Gogh‘s The Starry Night.
The Starry Night is a piece many are familiar with, yet the more you look at it and the more you learn, the more it changes. What is first a serene nocturnal countryside turns into hectic movement, what seems like mastery and skill becomes fervor or wildness, and what may be obvious morphs into the mysterious.
I decided to use The Starry Night as inspiration for today’s piece because I came across a Van Gogh quote yesterday that reminded me of how blind we can be when clinging to opposites. Because what we think of as darkness, may just be a richness we haven’t trained ourselves to see.
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” –Van Gogh, written to youngest brother Theo on September 8, 1888.
Now, stop and think: what are some opposites that together, add richness to your life?
Dig deeper into Van Gogh’s The Starry Night:
I came across the quote above while taking the MoMA‘s Coursera MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) “Modern Art & Ideas“. It’s a free class and here for people like you (and well, me).
According to science, Van Gogh captured the movement of invisible turbulence in The Starry Night. To learn more, take a couple of minutes to read The Books For Walls Project‘s article “How to Hold Hands with the Darkness“.
Want to read the rest of the letter I quoted, read The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, edited by Mark Roskill.
NadiaCDM 