We all know him for his difficult life struggle, his/her sad story, and the yellow color that represents happiness.
I have always found his/her philosophy of life full of hope.
I feel such a power of creation inside me; I'm sure there will come a time when I will do something nice on a regular basis every day. I put a lot of effort into making good things happen. But goodness also means painstaking work, frustration, and perseverance.
The period when he said that there will come times when I will do something nice every day on a regular basis
would actually be the last 70 days before his death.
He rented a room for 3.5 francs a night in the town of Auvers-Sur-Oise, France, woke up every morning, set up his easel in the middle of the field, and painted until the evening, inspired by the blue of the sky, the corn and wheat fields. More than 70 paintings in 70 days.
Van Gogh.
In his short 37-year life, he packed immortal works that would live on for centuries. He himself was able to see that only a few of his more than 900 paintings were sold.
I watched documentaries about his life, read books about him, and spent a long time in front of his paintings in museums to see the smallest details of his paintings.
A 7-square-metre attic room with a tiny glass window in an old three-story inn. The "suicide room", which was seen as an important part of the painter's private world, was not rented again after his death.
Van Gogh's room, Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
There was an empty room in front of me… Like the empty chair that represents death in his paintings, there was nothing you could see or touch in this room except a wooden chair. There was something you could just feel. It is also sadness.
He was dragged to death due to financial difficulties and mental illness, and died thirty hours later as a result of the bullet he shot in his chest. His brother Theo was always with him in his last hours.
How many letters he had written to Theo. Like a diary writer, he had only been able to tell her everything and his feelings for 18 years:
“What am I to most people? A worthless, strange or unpleasant person… Someone who has no position in society and will never have it; in short, something less than nothing. Okay, then-even if that's absolutely true-I want to show what's really in his heart with the deeds of such a strange and absent one someday. This is my passion, after all, based on love rather than anger, peace rather than passion. Even though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still peace, harmony and music in me.”
Maybe there was sadness in his 7 square meter room, but there was calmness, harmony and music in the fields of his town - where I walked around breathing in the wind - There was indeed calmness, harmony and music… There is no doubt that Van Gogh was able to reflect these three in his paintings so well because he felt so deeply…
Fields inspired by Van Gogh
He started painting at the age of 27, only ten years old.
Despite his hard life, he was determined and productive.
He say;
“Although it is very difficult at times, never lose your courage. In the beginning, no one succeeds as they wish, but everything will work out in time.”
He was always full of hope.
“Still, I can't help picturing a beautiful future before my eyes,” he wrote to Theo in a letter.
He worked to forget his pain, his life in poverty, his loneliness.
“How pathetic life is. However, one should not succumb to melancholy, one should seek solace elsewhere, one should better study, study…” he wrote to Theo again.
His hard brush strokes, sunflowers, Starry Night, his imagination, depth of emotion, power of observation, and his paintings that deepened as he looked would make him one of the most well-known painters in the world after his death.
But he would not be able to overcome the existential problems in his mind, and his hopeful outlook on life would gradually give way to self-pity. “This sadness will always continue,” he said. Now they lie side by side in Auvers-Sur-Oise with his best friend, his brother Theo. Sunflowers adorn the tombstones. Maybe he wasn't aware of it, but he left us a philosophy of life as valuable as hundreds of works:
“If you ask me, I am often as rich as kings. Not in monetary terms, of course, but I am rich because I have found something to dedicate my whole soul and heart to in my work, because it gives meaning to my life, because it is a source of inspiration.”