An image of a man staring through a thickly painted, colorful canvas loomed over the seated student audience. The lights dimmed until the undulating impasto paint became the only light source in the room. It glowed like daylight streaming through a church stained glass window. I welcomed the cool darkness, a refreshing escape from the late summer's heat. A slow acoustic guitar began to play an unfamiliar song. It sounded like the 60's in here.
"Starry starry night. Paint your colors blue and grey."
And the image began to change. Another self portrait. Whimsical, purposeful brush strokes. Bold, unapologetic colors. A set of unaverting eyes cast outward onto me.
"Look out on a summer's day, with eyes that know the darkness of my soul."
The images shifted from one self portrait into another, morphing, as if the paint was not yet dry and had not decided how to settle into the canvas. The man's expression seemed so reticent, and yet the expressive color seemed to say what the silence could not.
"Now I understand what you tried to say to me. And how you suffered for your sanity."
I related to the still, wordless man who painted himself over and over. I have heard it said, that you write about what you know best. I guess artists create what they know about most intimately. He must have known himself and his own sadness very well.
The word "sanity" implanted itself into my mind. How alien the word sounded to me. I never knew what sanity felt like. I have never been sure anyone has. I think people just pretend they know what sanity is. Maybe people are afraid of being judged and so they pretend to know things and feel things they are not yet convinced of.
"They would not listen, they did not know how perhaps they'll listen now."
I began to feel colors like emotions. Blue is sad. Blue is relaxed. Blue is spiritual. It is all together as one. The next slide was not a self portrait, but a nightscape with exploding circular stars, swirling above a quiet church town. The sky had a life all its own, as if some part of me became the turmoil of it. The tiny boxed residents nested below it were peppered with orange glowing squares of windows. So peaceful the town seemed, unaware and unacquainted with the violent colors above it.
I understand. It's about disconnectedness. Inside oneself and between people. And how quietly, how peacefully it happens. My heart stirs a little. A small painful twinge. And then another. I take a breath to keep from crying.
"They would not listen, they're not listening still, perhaps they never will."
Tearfully, without my permission, I connect to the colors. I do not fully understand why I lament. But I know something powerful has been said with paint and it has been said so vividly, and it's voice has remained so painfully unadulterated, it spanned the barrier of more than a century.
*Sixties acoustic guitar song later identified as "Vincent" by Don Mclean.
**YouTube slideshow of Van Gogh's work set to "Vincent" by Don Mclean.
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