You can listen to my letter here. ☝🏻
This week my lovely mum treated me to the Vincent Van Gogh experience during its final few days of it being exhibited in Liverpool.
Before we’d even entered the exhibition, I felt a huge wave of emotion overcome me and I realized my foolishness in not bringing tissues.
I’ve always felt a deep connection with Van Gogh - a kindred spirit in his relentless perseverance despite countless setbacks.
I relate to his living a life of oil-and-water emotions, the incompatibility of exquisitely loving life one moment and intensely loathing it the next - which, as we know, would ultimately cost him his life.
By the time we got to the huge room where Van Gogh’s paintings come alive from floor to ceiling with animation and music, tears streamed down my face.
Here’s a few things we can all learn from the beautiful being that was Vincent Van Gogh…
The Negative Space
As a little girl I remember in public speaking classes first hearing the quote by Claude Debussy:
Music is the space between the notes.
One of my favourite speakers, Wayne Dyer, spoke of this too:
“It is the space between the notes that makes the music. Without that emptiness, that silence in between, there is no music, only a noise.”
In art, we might call those pauses, those gaps, negative space.
In various classes and courses in art work I’ve taken over the years we were sometimes invited to draw the space in between the objects rather than the objects themselves. Why?
Because it creates creates a different perspective, emphasising the important parts, or elements.
Writing is the same. Imagine if we didn’t have full stops and commas.
Or, consider, how many times have you been part of a moment’s silence to a past event or person and it’s only then that the emotion starts to bubble up to the surface?
Why is that? It’s because you’ve been given a moment to pause, to ponder and to feel.
So you get the point. Pausing is perhaps the single most important thing to implement when it comes to speech giving for all sorts of reasons that I outline in my Masterclasses and coaching.
If, as David Hockney said, Van Gogh could see space in ways that most can’t, you can bet your bottom dollar he held a unique perspective, and it’s that being able to see things that not everyone is able to that ultimately makes his artwork so deeply moving. Feel into his work and you are feeling into his soul.
If pausing, or minding the gaps, the negative space, is important in speech giving, art work, writing…, how much more so in our everyday life?
How much more so will a mindful moment emphasize the important parts, the important elements of life?
Taking a moment throughout the day to come back to self, to gather back our scattered energy, to breathe deeply, to listen to the rustle of the trees, or rub our finger tips together with such a tension that we can feel the lines, the ridges, ah, this be the stuff of magic. 🪄
As the now famous saying goes:
We don’t meditate to get good at meditation, we mediate to get good at life.
Embrace Your Sensitive Nature
“Melancholy does not hurt, but makes us see things with a holier eye.” - Vincent’s Father.
Van Gogh said: “That is true ‘quiet melancholy’, fine gold…”
Vincent made the verse from 2 Corinthians 6:10 his own personal motto:
“As sorrowful but always rejoicing.”
Back in the days when I would experience crippling depressions a phrase from the Navajo Indians offered comfort. They don’t say: ‘I’m depressed’ but rather, ‘My soul is accompanied by sadness.’
I love that because it ensures depression doesn't define them.
I’m cautious these days of attributing labels to myself, including “I’m a highly sensitive person,” because I find myself not wanting to be defined by anything. We are all complex and multi-faceted beings.
That said, I’m often accompanied by sadness, I am intuitive and I am deeply sensitive and here’s the thing: there’s always such gold to be found in those hues and gradients of me.
I’m here to feel it all. Deeply.
The beauty of Vincent, to my mind, was his depth of soul. He couldn’t have shone his light as brightly as he did if he’d not experienced the intensity of feeling like he did.
When we metabolise the pain, work through it and unravel it, we get to share our unique gifts, offerings and light.
Stars can’t shine without darkness. I doubt Vincent’s Starry Night could ever have come to pass had he not felt life, in all its nuances, colours and shades.
I mean, let’s be real for a second. I hope you are not doing all that inner work just so that you can clear the pain. I hope behind it there is a genuine intent to bring more of your fullness out and to take more of your light out of the dark.
~Xavier Dagba~
It also means that we can be in pain and choose not to suffer. I wonder if Vincent had held out that bit longer, might he have some day fully embodied that Devine conclusion - that knowing that energy flows where attention goes. Because going from the following quote from him, he sure did already know it.
CREATE. CREATE. CREATE.
When you consider the multi-million dollar artist that Vincent is now and yet he never saw a cent of it, well, it’s sort of mind-blowing. And in a way, isn’t that the beauty of it?
He created for creating sakes. He painted prolifically, in spite of it all.
"But what's your ultimate goal, you'll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting L.]"
To Theo van Gogh, Cuesmes,
22-24 June 1880
It matters little whether we are creating a business, setting a table, writing a letter, baking a cake, or scribbling a quick sketch, creating creates clarity.
It’s in those little moments of flow state that we cultivating a clearer path. It’s in failing forwards, shining our light imperfectly, that we learn to trust the process, or as the Magickal Jim Rajan says, to feel the process. “We take life’s happenings and create with them.” (If you associate with being a sensitive soul or empath, I heart recommend that wee clip from Jim.)
I believe we are here to create our hearts out. However that looks for us. And sometimes, it is the simplest acts of creation that bring the most joy to ourselves, and thus, the world.
“It is alway the simplest piece of art which has practiced the most rigid elimination and is therefore the most difficult to duplicate.”
~ Lust For Life, Irving Stone ~
{I could write a whole article on that quote and speech giving too.}
I’ve long since adored how Van Gogh would often end his letters with a “handshake in thought”. Ahhh.
And I like to think his handshakes were not wet lettuces, but hearty and heartfelt.
{Side note: I always remember someone saying to me many years ago (a man), that my handshakes were so firm that it wasn’t very lady-like. I still can’t roll my eyes back far enough to express my despair at such a silly comment.}
With a super-firm-hearty-handshake in thought,
Suzy
PS. On creating, my mum, who is a master at crochet 🧶 magic, after watching a girl sketching at Port Sunlight recently, felt nudged to buy a sketch pad. I noticed, however, that it has remained on the shelf untouched. So I’ve challenged both her and myself to sketch for 30 days straight. It’s been years since I kept an illustrated journal and it’s a habit I’d like to cultivate once again. It activated gratitude for the magic of the every day.
🎨🖌️🪄
If you’d like to follow our 30 day scribbles, please sign into Substack and check out “Notes” on my publication. They’re so bad they’re good!
By doing this, it also means you could drop me a wee ♥️ or even a comment, which I’d just cherish soooo much. 🪄✨
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