Okay, I admit that I lied before. I haven't been posting everything I paint. I'm producing mountains and mountains of hideously malformed crap, so I'm only posting the least offensive stuff. Watching each new painting go wrong is a sort of daily humiliation. But on the other hand I do feel like I learn something from each one. The trick is probably to just keep moving forward and not get too hung up on any one painting and all the mistakes you made.In one of Van Gogh's many letters to his brother Theo, he wrote:
Do you know an American magazine called Harper's Monthly? There are wonderful sketches in it, which strike me dumb with admiration, among others 'Glass Works' and 'Steel Works', all scenes from factories; and also sketches from a Quaker town in the olden days, by Howard Pyle. I am full of new pleasure in those things, because I have a new hope of making things myself that have soul in them.... The point is to continue to work.
I love that quote. Yes, the point is to continue to work. But more amazingly - Van Gogh was inspired by, and striving to one day be like, Howard Pyle? That is insane. Pyle (see painting at left) is absolutely brilliant, but how many people today know who he is?Maybe this is how Van Gogh became Van Gogh. Keep working. Find inspiration in the work of others. Eventually surpass them all. Cut off your ear and shoot yourself in the chest.
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