The Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh. This painting is in the public domain.
Following up on my recent Button Sunday post, sometime in 2019, maybe 2020, I was thinking of Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, one of my favorite paintings, though I admit to a soft spot for all of Van Gogh’s work. When I went searching for it online, just to look at it again, I stumbled across a digital painting by Alex Ruiz that blew me away.
During the summer after (my) fifth grade, our parents sent Debby and me to camp for a week. Debby’s a few years older, and that did NOT fit in with a teenager’s view of how she wanted her summer to be. She hated camp (her word). I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember this. At least one night, everyone went outside and lay in the grass staring up at the sky. This was in rural North Carolina, no light pollution, and I was mesmerized in a way I never had been. I finally asked someone older, maybe a counselor, “What IS that?” and was told I was seeing the Milky Way. Had never heard of it, didn’t know what it meant, but I knew I’d never forget it, and I never have.
©Alex Ruiz, 2011
When I saw Alex Ruiz’s Starry Night, I returned to that magic moment and eleven-year-old me. Alex created it from roughly Van Gogh’s same location as an homage to the artist. Van Gogh is the person in the painting, and this is what Alex imagines he saw that inspired his “Starry Night.”
Ever since, I’ve used that image as a place I mentally go when I have insomnia: Ruiz’s meadow, the breathtaking sky, and Van Gogh in a field of flowers soaking in beauty and inspiration. Though I haven’t written it yet, when the Neverending Saga nears the last novel, I already know the chapter Van Gogh and Ruiz have inspired. It may be a while before I get there, but it’s a transcendent moment of kindness and love and a splendid night sky.
I have a print of Ruiz’s digital art hanging in the writing sanctuary. It makes a good companion to a print Debby gave me at Christmas.
©Ravens of the Night, WingsDomain Art, Photography Canvas Print, 2010
Finally, below is one of a set of four different Van Gogh-inspired cups that I think Tom’s parents gave us for Christmas one year. I’ve photographed it with today’s writing playlist.
Natalie Imbruglia, Left of the Middle; Joe Jackson, The Millennium Collection; Etta James, Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday; Jewel, Pieces of You and Spirit.
May you find beauty and inspiration wherever you look.
When we saw the Van Gogh exhibit here they said it was drawn from his window on June 19 1889 at 4 am … because of the positioning of Venus and the stars. It’s amazing
The view would have closely approximated that time and probably was painted from memory during the day. He painted more than 25 views from the same window, capturing many times of day. It’s so interesting that a painting he thought was a failure has been studied and every bit of his location and the skies at that time have been so endlessly researched (and argued about).
When I look at Van Gogh’s painting, I see an artist capturing chaos and order, beauty and pain, hope and sadness, in one work. (And of course, his view had nothing to do with the Milky Way. That’s just a breathtaking sky that’s part of my personal history.)
For Ruiz to take Van Gogh out of the window, into the natural world, to observe the scene is maybe his vision, like my hope, that this is a moment when Van Gogh could have transcended his circumstances and pain for beauty and art. Even if not, it can convey that vision and hope to people who are deeply moved by The Starry Night.
I do not watch Dr. Who fan but a friend sent me a clip of the Van Gogh episode. The Dr takes him to the Louvre and he sees his wing and his paintings there, and they turn him around so he can overhear the curator speak to how he is the most popular painter in the world and how he had a life of tragedy and pain and how it would be so easy to paint that tragedy but he turned it into beauty. And no one has done it like that since Van Gogh cried I cried, maybe Matt Smith cried
I did too, each and everytime I watch that episode again and again from my DVDs. The photography of the episode is stunningly beautiful.
I just returned from the Outpost Gallifrey One Doctor Who convention in LAX area. It was it’s 33rd run, and the theme was 33 1/3 vinyl “Long live the revolution!” a slogan from a society that beat the tax man. I passed out those 45 rpm yellow record adapters instead of the ribbons. The crowds were back from the pandemic too but we all masked up.
I haven’t seen one of those record adapters in years. I’m surprised I don’t have any. You reminded me on my first record player; there was a thing that would fit onto the stacking spindle when you switched from albums to 45s.