“Dear Brother,
I feel what Pa and Ma instinctively think about me (I don’t say reasonably).
There’s a similar reluctance about taking me into the house as there would be about having a large, shaggy dog in the house. He’ll come into the room with wet paws — and then, he’s so shaggy. He’ll get in everyone’s way. And he barks so loudly.
In short — it’s a dirty animal.
Very well — but the animal has a human history and, although it’s a dog, a human soul, and one with finer feelings at that, able to feel what people think about him, which an ordinary dog can’t do.
And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog, accept them as they are.”
~ Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Nuenen, 15 December 1883 ~
I remember reading these words when I was 17 years old and relating to this in my own life at the time. I was renting a room in a strangers house. I was riding a bicycle several kilometers to art school in the fall and spring and making the same journey on foot in the winter months. I never saw it as being hard. It was my life. I was showing up at the easel and doing the work.
Things got better for a while, but then my life is cyclical.
This dog needs to find a home.
What one has to do to remain on the creative path is astounding sometimes.
Vincent you are my hero.
Life is *beautiful*.
