A beautiful forest greeted me on the west end of the park, and then it was a four kilometer bike ride to the museum, nestled in its heart. On the way there, you saw this:

Alright, alright enough of the park already! I wish I could share all of my photos in this entry, but there are way too many. If you want to see more, be sure to click on any of the photos to take you to the photo album.

So, I’m already pretty overwhelmed by the views, and then I get to the museum, and to Vincent. I’ve rarely felt like I was drowning in beauty before, but I have never felt so creatively exhausted as I did that day (I had, of course, taken a train from Amsterdam that morning, but that’s besides the point).

Finally, I give you, some of my photos of Vincent…

Wheat stack under a cloudy sky (July 1890)

Normally, I scoff at those who try to equate Vincent’s passionate brushwork with mental anguish (he writes again and again in his letters that he feels most at peace when he paints, and cannot paint at all when he is ill), but this painting, the first I saw, broke my heart a bit. It was made in the last month of his life, and there is something uncontrolled, muddy and impatient in his work here, particularly in the foreground, that hurt to look at…

The rest, however, is masterly.

The garden of the asylum at Saint-Remy (May 1889)

I love how two-thirds of this painting consists of the blossoming trees.

Wheatfield with Reaper and Sun (late June 1889)

Almost can’t find the reaper here… so much yellow! And my, how it sings…

Self-Portrait (April – June 1887)

It is only after my trip to Europe that I truly began to know his face: the blue-green eyes, the high cheekbones, the bent nose and red hair that pops. Also, his gaze: steady, curious, vulnerable…

Rose and Peonies (June 1886)

He quite often signed his work in red, usually to set off and accentuate the green in the composition – red’s complementary color. Also, this rose totally reminded me of the rose from the day before in Amsterdam.

God, I love his piles of paint. This one is just a whirlpool of pink vertigo.

Portrait of Joseph-Michel Ginoux (December 1888)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a print of this painting before, and is it ever striking in person! I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in fact looking at the real man…

Road with cypress and star (May 1890)

Always a couple in the foreground, and a cypress as the bridge between heaven and earth…

I end this entry with one of his stars.

If you enjoyed the photos, don’t forget to explore the rest (I have 87 photos from that day!) by clicking on any one of them here.

Happy Monday. :)

I wish I could upload photos right now from my camera, hopefully I will be able to tomorrow, because WOW what an experience. Firstly, I could take all the non-flash photos of the paintings I wanted in the museum, unlike the Van Gogh Museum, so I took a ton there. And they’re quite good if I do say so myself.

But THEN, on TOP of that, the museum is in the middle of a national park. So today I took a train to a nearby town (arnhem, where I’m staying tonight), then a bus to Otterlo, and then I had to walk a bit to the park, and then they had free bicycles within the park. Pretty awesome, right? Except someone had taken my free bike for a ride when I got out (of course I was like the last person out of the museum) and so I had to walk the 4 km or so back to the bus stop. However, I didn’t really mind this because the park was incredibly gorgeous. I took another hundred pictures while walking back of all the fields and forests and beautiful things all around. It was amazing. The picture below is not mine, but it illustrates a bit of what I’m talking about.

(Of course my pictures are even better.)

Aren’t you kinda thinking, oh yeah, that’s like a Van Gogh? I am. I’ll get you a picture later.

At least now I can finally rest. Catch you later…