I am GOD

Over the course of my life, painting was the only constant, the only thing that truly ever meant anything to me. I put my whole self into everything I create. Was I successful? In the sense that I have created priceless works of art, that will be in museums long after I die, but I am tortured by the viewer’s perception of what the substance of my art means. They think that I have painted a pretty picture of sunflowers, or of a quaint town at night. I once lived and talked with those people, I was one of them. I was a wealthy art dealer and content. I was in love, she rejected me. After that rejection I became aware of how the people around me treated art as a commodity, as nothing more than an expensive decoration to impress visitors. I was fired for my opinions, but I knew that was coming. The hypocrisy of those people disgusted me. I became a missionary. I lived liked the people I was serving and I drew things that happened in their everyday lives. I knew that art was a powerful thing. I wanted to give these people a voice. I took Theo’s advice and put all of my attention towards art. I want to the Royal Academy of Art. It was all bullshit. Art is more than line and shadow, perspective and form. It can be more powerful than any king or ruler.

I left for The Hague and I had a relationship with a prostitute and we had a child, but I abandoned them-my father’s advice. Sien drowned herself. I’m ashamed for letting social protocol stop me from helping her. I left to live with my parents. Then my father died and I was grief stricken. It was in that time that I painted “The Potato Eaters.” They represented how I felt- like every day was the same, and it was never enough to satisfy me.

The rest of my life felt like that. I was never satisfied. I always had some desperate longing, but I never knew what it was that I was longing for. My art reflected these feelings. The sickly yellow of my Arles paintings give the viewer a weird and “out-of-it” feeling. As though they’ll never feel the same way that they used to. My painting of a bar illustrates my constant paranoia that something bad is about to happen. I live in fear of the next day, knowing that death is coming closer. I want to die, yet I am afraid of it.

I don’t think that anyone will ever be able to understand me. My mind is just too different; my thoughts only fully make sense to me. I am a prisoner to my mind. It is my mind that has kept me from any semblance of happiness, but it is my art that has somewhat freed me. I have given up the hope of ever being satisfied. My last work sums up my feelings towards life. Life is short and at the end of it, nothing really matters, because everyone will die. Clothes and scandals won’t matter, and all those pretty paintings hanging up in your home won’t matter.

The Potato Eaters

Entrance of the Hospital

Vase with Twelve Sunflowers

Starry Night

Wheat Field with Crows