I get it, Vincent

Sometimes you look out the window, and the very same scene that yesterday looked idyllic, and hopeful, and sunlit today looks cold and dead and frozen and ugly. Sometimes you see what Van Gogh saw. Sailboats on a sea can look colorful and enviably adrift and serene or imminently upended, threatened by the rage around them. A couple strolling in the woods, pausing to be observed, is oblivious to the tangled undergrowth and brambles they walk through. Shoes, inanimate and without voice, cry out alone of hard years, an austere existence, worn out, yet still waiting to serve. A country cottage isn't inviting, but neglected, haunted, about to endure another storm. A self-portrait glares at the viewer,uncomfortable with the introspection, annoyed, impatient with the scrutiny, yet looking beyond you-past you-not actually meeting your eyes.

Artists have the luxury, if the talent, to slash and stab with their brush, and paint in darkened shades, to lay violence into a vase of flowers or anxiety and tension in a patch of irises. Words alone lack that extra dimension of color and texture. Yet, today, I want to slash and stab, and paint long shadows and impending violence. The pendulum's swing, it's arc, touches optimism, cheer, hope, and charity at one end then swings towards darkness, anger, disdain, fatalism, pointlessness. Sometimes it seems the existentialists are right. Life isn't a movie, where conflicts resolve, justice prevails, and truth is vindicated. Quite the contrary, truthfulness is rare, violence and exploitation are only tempered by the threat of a greater ability to do violence, and inhumanity is so common that righteous outrage has been dulled. It seems that real life is a cellophane thick epidermis of contentedness, lightheartedness, and cheer enwrapping cores of desperation and futility. Walking in circles. I get it Vincent. The scene out my window, today, should be painted in thick, angry swipes of indigo, and gray, and brown. The pendulum will swing. Spring will come. The palette will change to light green, and sunny yellow, the sky will look powder blue, and I'll pity the man who painted all these darkened scenes. But only for a season.

jls