The October challenge for Write...Edit...Publish (WEP) is to write to the prompts, CONSTELLATIONS or HALLOWEEN or a combination of both.
The minute Yolanda ran the idea of CONSTELLATIONS by me, Vincent van Gogh's painting, The Starry Night and Don McLean's tribute, Vincent, came to mind. I've long been fascinated by van Gogh and have visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam which holds 200 of his paintings, 400 of his drawings and 700 of his letters.
So, I've gone with my van Gogh inspiration, taken some poetic licence with the blurry facts of his life and death, weaved in some direct quotes from him, added relevant paintings and painting detail, and come up with a creative non-fiction piece from Vincent's POV.
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| Vincent van Gogh, The
Starry Night, 1889 Displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City |
The Darkness of the Soul
The
Starry Night.
The
curving lines of hills, of mountains, of sky are silhouetted in the dying
breath of day. The brilliant colours of blues, of yellows, of greens, take on a
mystic hue when no sun lights their fire.
As
the fit overtakes me, I clench my fists and imagine…
All
colours blending into one.
Colours
changing hue.
Flaming
flowers brightly blaze
Swirling
clouds in violet haze…
Taking
ragged breaths, I hit my head against the cypress tree outside the compound This tree is one of many planted as a windbreak by farmers long ago. Waves of wheat with shuddering golden stalks roar
like the sea and crash in the goddess-blown winds. Morning fields of amber grain, a bronze curtain, flicker through my mind.
Colour.
The life present within colour. Colours with a life of their own.
I
wrestle with how to find an adequate means of portraying a spiritual experience
through my application of colour. Colour represents the value of existence; it
represents life itself.
I gaze
mesmerised at the countryside surrounding Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. Long before
sunrise, the sky is empty of everything but the morning star, then lesser stars
appear one by one.
The mountain range of the Alpilles dominates the fields of corn, the rows of grapes and the groves of olives across the valley. The mountains shimmer with the power of God as He sprays constellations across the horizon in a broad band of light.
The
night is even more richly coloured than the day, coloured with intense violets,
blues and greens. Some stars are lemony, others exude a pink, green,
forget-me-not blue glow.
I must
capture the shifting landscape of the night. I must capture its beauty, its
majesty, its terror. I must impress in my works the harmony, the organised
unity of nature.
Now in July of 1889, in the quaint village of Saint-Rémy, the time has come to finish what I have begun.
I press my bandaged ear, quieting the voices. The
only voice I crave is the voice of God.
I set
my canvas and render my night imaginings, not en plein air, but in
the studio gifted to me for the duration of my stay.
What
a contrast to the sky of Paris. Here in France profond, the sky
suffers no interference from gas or electric street lights or garish shop
fronts.
The
sky here is as pure as God.
I
have painted the starry night over the Rhone, but now I will paint the starry
night over my little village.
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| Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone,1888 |
The
sky I will paint is blue, bluer than the irises I love to paint. Those
voluptuous irises, those crammed, ripe, moist excesses of nature anchored in
the warm red soil. That contrast between the deep blue of the finely-drawn buds
and the bold green leaves with their tongue-like forms against a backdrop of
the light green flowering meadow. They radiate light from within, creating that
balanced connected harmony I crave.
A
cosmic happening is taking place. My brush and the canvas are as one.
The
stars, whorls of yellow and white, are a reflection of my beloved sunflowers or
the summer wheat at harvest. Two gigantic spiral nebulae entwine; eleven
enormously enlarged stars with their aureoles of light break through the night.
The winding, wavy curls reach their tendrils towards the rising sickle of the unreal
orange-coloured moon which overlooks the star-lit village. Bathed in moonlight,
the houses are barely visible, lumpen shadows, short, sharp dashes amongst the
trees. Dominating the shadowy village is the silhouette of the lone church, its
spires reaching towards God, reaching towards salvation.
But
the church is temporal. So I imagine the swaying cypresses in the foreground to
resemble church spires—nature overpowering man-made structures.
It is
not so much the language of painting as that of nature which one must listen
to.
By
flickering strokes of my brush, my cypresses reach upwards like green flaming
tongues; even the edges of my painting will not constrain their unbridled
growth.
They
are as beautifully-proportioned as an Egyptian obelisk. Why has no one else
rendered them the way I see them?
The brooding landscape comes alive, my brushstrokes
pure and true. My fingers move in arcs of crazed creativity. I must finish
before the fit takes me again.
Finally, it is done.
The night landscape I imagined will live on forever
in minds which accept the elemental things of life, such as nature, objects,
people, joy, salvation…
The night wraps around me like my mother's arms as
I hurry through the fields to my death.
‘Mother! Mother!’
I can no longer exist in this world of staggering
turmoil.
I spin through the darkness of the soul and my overwhelming
fear. I wrap my arms around my beloved cypress tree. I am deep below the
surface of my life, choking, gasping, retching.
I am desperate for air, but not desperate for life.
I have nowhere to go. No one to help me with the
demons that taunt, the thoughts of suicide that scream in my head.
I am ready to play the role of a madman, although I
do not have the strength…
How does one end life? A shot to the head would send
me spiralling like those yellow stars reaching out for the yellow moon.
My guard sleeps, his mouth a smile of utter blissfulness.
He dreams of a saner world than mine. If I had the time, I would paint him…
Will I be watching from above as they ponder my
death? Will I be as one with the night sky? Will my brother forgive me?
My stomach explodes in shards of bitter pain. I fall
onto the sweet grass of Deep France, watching the starry night fade, the
colours blend into one as life ebbs away.
I have reached the stars…I am one with the heavenly
constellations…
The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Van Gogh, Ingo F. Walther, TASHEN Press
979 words
FCA
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| This story is an entry in the WEP October challenge. Please go HERE to visit more entries or click on names in my right sidebar. |
