This is a reflection written during a holiday to Europe in 2013
Today I went to the Van Gogh Museum.
My sausage legs have had enough of being wrapped up In tight jeans so they begged me to wear a dress despite the nippy weather and practicalities of riding a bike. The white sundress might have passed a normal girl’s fashion panel had I not strangled its femininity with my puffy black bomber jacket. I stretched myself and wore a tiny polly pocket handbag of rachael’s so i could pack a banana. It looks like a small khake cadet camp water bottle. I looked like a very confused version of Dora the explorer. Riding in my tired pink hush puppies was a tough ask given my recent introduction to road cycling. (Don’t tell dad- he’ll kill me for my flagrant disregard for practicality)
I ungracefully mounted my too-tall bike, balancing myself on my tippy toes, and cycled up to the lush green pasture near the entrance to the gallery. I rode by the little red awnings framing the windows in which the ladies in lingerie sit. I’m still intrigued by their casual patient presence in their respective fishbowls as people point and gawk. They fiddle on their phones and smile as they wait for some sad man to peer in and pick them. Then their curtains are drawn. The streets are decorated by the little vignettes of closed and open curtains. Like little figurines on the top of a cake, they’re perched on a chair behind glass – though these are a lot less picturesque, slightly dumpier, more variety, and certainly more expensive to purchase I suspect. I wonder if they’d rather be purely ornamental creations on the throne of a fluffy white ice cream cake..?
I mightn’t have ten hearty lessons from Vincent for you, but this is what I found:
– audio tapes are as brilliant as I remember, I had an uninterrupted narration of a brilliant man’s life. My generic lady breathed life into everything I saw, I couldn’t have done it without her.
– tying a jacket around my waist is just as handy as it was when I was ten at the Easter show
– Vincent cut part of his left ear lobe off after a fight with his friend Paul Gaugin
– he had a yellow house in the south of France and he wanted all his friends to come share his studio, but only his friend Paul turned up.
– Vincent didn’t decide he was going to be an Artist until he was 27. I feel reassured that my raison d’être remains unknown. Vincent and I had a quiet word and he whispered I can open my osteopathy clinic on the northern beaches in five years time after all.
-He was a self taught genius who painted spontaneously and paid little attention to what others thought.
– He believed in technical skill and hard work.
– He practiced endlessly
The saddest part of his story was despite clearly mastering his craft and creating an incredible body of work in a decade, he still felt like a failure and told his brother Theo this on the precipice of his death.
I had a nice day there. I was reminded of the power of self-study and the responsibility of nurturing our own skills.
I am aware that this conclusion sounded like a school reflection assignment after an excursion. I am ok with that, I am comfortable with my ongoing attachment to all things ‘school’.
