Vincent van Gogh- The Sower (after Millet) 1888
If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
-Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, 1872-1886
Jean-Francois Millet- The Sower 1850
There are a lot of other things I could write about, things that of concern to me in many areas, but I am going to leave them off the table this morning. Instead, I just wanted to share a few words from Vincent van Gogh and what I imagine is one of his lesser-known paintings, The Sower.
Painted in 1888, van Gogh appropriated the figure here from the famous 1850 painting of the same name from Jean-Francois Millet, which was a very influential on van Gogh. He painted several takes on the Millet painting, of which Millet painted several subsequent versions himself.
I share this image from van Gogh today because whenever I come across it, it reminds me of how influential it was on me when I first saw it years ago as a nascent painter. The simplicity and strength of the composition’s elements and the way the paint evoked feelings well beyond the subject spoke to me then and now. It felt uncontrived and sincere, a deep expression of the artist.
I can’t tell you how many times I have been reminded of this painting in my own work over the decades. Sometimes it is in the composition, the way the tree trunk slices the picture plane or the prominence of the sun above the horizon line. Sometimes it comes in recognizing the same emotional response to what I am working on that I felt in seeing his painting.
The words here reflect van Gogh’s feelings on living and painting with sincerity. This has had much the same effect on me that this painting and others of his have had on me. I am not qualified to judge the quality of my work or whether it will have a lasting legacy. That is well out of my hands. But I can attest to its sincerity and the fact that the emotions it expresses are genuine and meaningful to me.
That sense of sincerity has been my guiding star for the past thirty years. It has sustained me in my work and in my life. Like every living human, I have had my fair share of high points and an equally fair share of, as I call them, beatdowns, breakdowns and meltdowns. Clear-eyed sincerity has pulled through these thus far in my life. And I believe that applies to my work. In fact, enduring the down times with sincerity may have strengthened the work. As van Gogh wrote in another letter:
Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.
I would like to think that has been the case, that adversity has been turned to strength through sincerity and resolve.
I think that must be the seed that every artist sows.
Got to go. The fields are waiting to for me. Maybe I can sow some seeds while I listen to Satchmo. Here’s Louis Armstrong and La Vie en Rose.
Redtree Times 