“I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am,
do without something which is greater than I, which is my life— the power to create.”

Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

I'd tell you why Vincent moves me so, but how can I?
To witness even one of his paintings, thick with memories, heavy with melancholy--to read his words, his ability to straddle the human and the divine--well, that is a beginning.
Vincent's white iris stands alone, and yet surrounded in a field of irises, vivid color and exquisite nature.
To date, I've seen 324 Van Gogh paintings, 200 or more drawings, have read his letters, and walked many places he walked.
By following his journey, I've begun to understand my own.
My novel-in-progress follows M., a young woman who quits her MFA program, leaves her fiancee' and sells all her belongings to go on a quest--to see all 864 Van Goghs in the world.
She winds up in Arles, reliving Vincent's life--and Vincent is an apparition who leads her to dizzying heights, and devastating lows.
Enjoy this short excerpt from White Iris

by Carol D. O’Dell

Vincent. The V is generous, scooped like a vase, and the other letters stand individually, each lining up like cups waiting to be filled. The T is on an upward slant, like the skip of a child.
The drone of the professor’s voice interrupts my thoughts, my visions. I push my hair out of my face, look up from the page where I’ve scripted Vincent’s name over and over, unaware.
He signed Vincent on nearly all of the 864 paintings, 1,037 drawings, 150 watercolors, 133 line sketches, and 874 letters. I know his name better than my own.
I’ve dreamed it, traced and copied it in journals and sketchpads, on the back of class notes napkins, gallery floor guides, and numerous class notes. His parents named him
Vincent after his stillborn brother. Probably not a good thing to do.

Six years of my adult life squandered in classrooms with peeling wallpaper and an old clock that hums on every hour. Another sixty minutes of my life ticked away. Stay in school, my parents urged, so I did. I thought these walls and halls were hallowed, that academe had some sacred wisdom to impart to obedient students who sit and follow all the said and unsaid rules: don’t get impassioned, don’t ask questions, don’t disagree. Don’t, whatever you do, fall in love. 

Professor Frump—that’s what I call him—gets out the slides. Oh great, slides, that’s not been done before. Don’t they pay these guys enough to afford a new pair of shoes, and who sanctioned a corduroy jacket the official uniform of the quasi-intelligent?   

Irises comes on the screen. The rehearsed monotone begins, and I stare at the watered-down, fuzzy version of the painting that sold for 78 million and is considered one of the most recognized pieces of art in the world, painted in St. Rémy from the bedroom window of an ancient asylum where ten centuries of madmen sought solace. I want to interject this, but why? So Professor Frump will like me? Think I’m studious?

I’m standing in the window above a patch of last year’s leaves and twigs in damp soil. Green swords puncture the air and Vincent sketches the first flower, a few simple lines. I am beside him, witnessing this resurrection. He reaches, scratches his ragged ear with the tip of a paintbrush. He arrived at St. Rémy two months after that fitful night, the incident that caused the good folk of Arles to sign a petition stating they’d rather not have a lunatic artist in their midst. He signed himself in, said he was not sure he could live independently, the irises still deep underground that February waited for his brush.
Vincent became Vincent. Authentic. Defined. All heartbreaking color and ecstatic emotion.

We shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism, and humbug, and will want o live—more musically.
How will this come about, and what will we discover?”

Vincent Van Gogh, 1888