A Day in the Life of an Artist (by Rahul Roy)

The day was bright and sunny. Young Vincent was on his way to the cornfields in the blazing heat of summer, in his trade mark hat, sporting a rough red beard. The walk through the dry fields did not tier him. For him it was yet another regular day which he would spend on painting. He headed towards his favorite location in the shades of the tall cypresses. That morning he had decided that he would paint ‘Cornfield and cypresses’. Cypress trees in south of France has always fascinated him. The golden yellow cornfields reminded him of his nights spent at the richly illuminated Café Guerbois at Paris. It was there that he met other infamous contemporary impressionists including his friend Paul Gauguin.

 He had painted the fields many a times before. It is the same cornfield and cypress trees that he had depicted under a starry starry night in one of his paintings, few days back. The images are still fresh in his mind. The larger than life stars, the yellow crescent moon, the expanding circles of light all built up on strokes and dashes of colors. He had never seen such magnificent trees in his native Dutch country side. He is now a regular visitor to these cornfields, a stones throw away from St. Remy mental asylum, where he is admitted.

The bouts of convulsions and hallucinations during the night had drained him out of his energy. It was difficult for him to walk. The pain reminded him of his days of Borinage, the poor coal mining district of Belgium. It was there he had painted‘Potato Eaters’. A dark masterpiece showing the hard life of the dutch peasants. But it did not dampen his enthusiasm to paint. He finally managed to set up his easel, mount his canvas and started to apply thick coats of paint. Vincent has always been a voracious painter. He took very little time to paint. He often completed a picture in a single day. Mostly evident from his best known painting ‘Sunflowers’ which had to be painted very quickly before the flowers dropped. The landscape surrounding the small town of St. Remy had a striking resemblance with Arles, where he had stayed with his painter friend Paul for months.

With every passing moment the mood of the sky changed, formation of the clouds altered. The tall cypresses swayed in the winds. But Vincent kept on painting. He never stopped to take a break from work, as if he was in hurry. The clouds started to appear in his canvas as shapeless masses of violet, cypresses in flame like shapes and corn fields in his signature bold dashes of bright yellow. He had just completed yet another, masterpiece work. He wanted to continue but he could no longer. He had to return back to his asylum. He was allowed out to paint only under strict supervision of the hospital authorities. But he was not disappointed. He could paint something else in his room, might be his pair of boots, his utensils, his bedroom chairs, or his entire bedroom at the asylum.

The subject of a painting hardly mattered to him as long he had something to paint. While other used their brains he painted with his heart. His love for painting gave him immense pleasure in times of hardships. Every time he applied paint, It brought a smile on his face, though his life was a grim and desperate struggle against hunger, failed relationships, poverty, alcoholism and insanity from which he never fully recovered.