Vincent Van Gogh’s artwork and his wellbeing

Introduction to my Blog:

The focus onto this blog is to reflect the ways nature has influenced artists in different ways. It could be their mental wellbeing, spiritual or inspiration for work through painting.

For my first post, I have decided to look at one of Vincent Van Gogh’s modernist impressionism work called Roses in 1853-1890 and how his work influenced him from his mental wellbeing at that time period. He was born 1853, Neverlands and died 1890, France.

The painting was an oil on canvas and is held in the Vincent Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, originally the flowers in his painting were indeed pink not white and can see the hints of the pink pigments through the white due to the bleaching of the pigment used.

Reference: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0187V1962?v=1

He is known for his indecisive last-minute changes in his work due to his mental wellbeing and how he reflected himself into his work. I decided to write about this artist due to his inspiration of his life and as well as his artwork. He is one of my most influenced artists in my work as an artist.

His ideas behind the piece of work was to create a contrast of light colours and dark. He decided to add an insect into his painting lastly, this may due to his last moment decisions or doubting on his work. His work has expressed himself through his mental wellbeing and although we greatly appreciate his work now. He saw it as just another piece of work that he expressed himself throughout his life. It was not important at the time when he was alive, and people did not value art at that time of period.

At that time era, there was not any mental health support for Vincent Van Gogh, even though he was still depressed and had psychiatric illness he put this into his work as it is known that people with this tends to be creative. Over the years he created so many pieces and although this was a coping strategy he still struggled very much.

A reviewer called Albert Aurier (1865-1892). He surprisingly reviewed his work during his lifetime and was in fact a painter/art critic himself. He described Vincent Van Gogh work, as the only painter he knew. “who perceives the colouration of things with such intensity, with such metallic, gem-like quality”.

Reference: https://www.thoughtco.com/first-reviewer-of-van-goghs-paintings-2578999