After my first year
in Chicago I moved into a 3rd floor flat which had a photographic
darkroom in the basement. I lived there for 3 years, and worked hard
at art and making photos. After getting married I left Chicago and
moved downstate and bought a house and built a darkroom in the
basement. For the next 15 years I worked hard at art and making
photos. During that time I finished the 3 volumes of the van Gogh
letters, which took me approximately 1 year per volume, so that by
the end of the 3rd volume 3 years had passed and I found I had
changed so much that I needed to revisit the letters from the
beginning, so I reread them a second time. After making it through
the 2nd time, another 3 years having passed, I decided I had changed
so much, I had to go back and reread the letters a third time. When I
finished reading them a decade had passed since I had come across
that dusty volume II sitting on the library shelf, and I realized
that my path in life had been largely determined by the pure fate and
chance of having decided to check the book out and begin reading 1
letter per night.
Some of the
photos/drawings I made over the span of 18 years -
In 2009 I decided to
end my art quest. It was an amazing path to follow for 18 years, and
I felt Van Gogh by my side for the duration of it - I indeed needed
his positive intervention and help because many a year I was jobless
without income, yet I rarely despaired or felt afraid because I felt
an invisible hand guiding me along. Soon after, my marriage with
Rachel ended, and this made sense since my life had become somewhat
directionless once I had left the path of art. In 2012, nothing
holding me to the town I was living in, I decided to go on a journey
to a far off place, in SE Asia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia. I had no
definite plans, and I ended up living in Chiang Mai for 3 months.
About a month into my stay I discovered an "art shack" in
an alleyway 2 blocks from my apartment. Inside the shack were Van
Gogh paintings from various periods of his life - The Hague, Arles,
Auvers, Paris - still, even after I had left the path of art, the
hand of Van Gogh was still guiding me along on my travels, making
sure to remind me to be grateful for all of the beauty and the pain
in the world. I recalled his final letters from Auvers, where he
began to think more and more about death - how death reminded him of
stars and how he imagined that when he was at Eternity's Gate (oh my
god, I find myself crying at this moment!) he would become star
dust, floating forever and ever over all and everything.
I ended up traveling
to various places from 2012-2015. It was during this time that I made
your acquaintance, Kait. In a way I gave you 20 years of myself
bundled together into a dream setting.
in 2015 I took a job
at the Art Institute of Chicago, returning after so many years.
During my first week of walking to the museum/work, I felt like a
ghost, someone dead who was returning to a past place which I had
once roamed. On the walk I noticed a painting upon a parking garage,
yes, it was Van Gogh once again by my side, gazing at me from 3
stories up -
A little later I
find out that Van Gogh's Bedroom was the current exhibit - walking
through the galleries gazing at Van Gogh's life on the walls, I
realized that he was going to be with me to the very end, and I could
not help smiling at how strange and dream-like life can be.
And today, walking
to the library to study chess and make upcoming travel plans, I put
it all together when I saw the new film coming out this week, At
Eternity's Gate, just a week before I am to take off for a far away
place, wandering once again, with Van Gogh by my side, perhaps not
only guiding me, but getting a chance to see a world that perhaps he
misses, through the eyes of someone he has picked to be his guide in
this crazy and turbulent world. All I can say is - "Vincent, I
won't let you down, I will try my best to see some beautiful and
painful places, let us wander together in this stupendously
mysterious place, forever and ever, never losing hope, always
striving with every ounce of energy to be the best we can be. I love you,
Vincent."
