RAVINE

Welcome to what is now a new blog design.  It was not my intention to make the change, but I totally screwed something up while trying to make the degree sign.  Lord knows whatever key combination I depressed made significant changes in the other blog layout.  Yesterday was a total waste so far as getting anything accomplished, but I must say that I learned a few new things about my laptop that I didn't know before.  And, that's a good thing.    

We're experiencing ridiculously warm temps.  Yesterday morning it was 47° and we had our 5 o'clock happy hour out on the deck.  As much as I love winter, gotta say it was a sweet sip of summer.

This morning it's overcast and gloomy, just like some of Vincent's earlier paintings.  I'm getting to where I can recognize the painter's mood when I look at one of his paintings.  The more we look into Vincent's genius mind, the more we see turmoil, a mind that fought with itself, in an effort to fit in, or be like others.  In my humble opinion, I think his mind was so brilliant that he  tapped into a private dimension that allowed him to see the unseeable. And, for that he was institutionalized.      

Ravine of the Peyroulets - 1889

Van Gogh painted Ravine during his stay at the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France.  In a letter he wrote to a friend, he stated:  "Such subjects certainly have a fine melancholy but then it is fun to work in rather wild places, where one has to dig one's easel in between the stones lest the wind should blow the whole caboodle over."  

The story behind this painting is fascinating.  Vincent was inspired by the natural landscape of the region, where he lived much of his life.  Vincent is believed to have created this work while in a particularly agitated state of mind, which is clearly reflected in its energy and intensity. It is my opinion that nature was Vincent's cathedral, where he could kneel before the Great Force and, with a paintbrush, create a visible prayer of gratitude and private petition.     

Ravine is done in cool tones of grays and blues.  He created a sense of depth with the charcoal-gray tones set as the backdrop for the ravine.  The viewer looks directly along the ravine's bottom, as if one were standing in the ravine.  In the top of the painting, Van Gogh used lighter blues over whites and splashes of navy to create a moving sky.  The sky seems to mimic the water of the river.   Notice how Van Gogh used swirling brushstrokes to create a flowing downward motion.  Also look closely to see the red-orange and sea-green plants on the sides of the ravine wall.  (If you have a touch screen, it helps to enlarge the paintings to get a close look at the way he used a paintbrush to create the energy that made its way through him and onto canvas.)

In this painting, Vincent applied masterful brushstroke techniques to create a marine-like world in the middle of a ravine.  The boulders in the lower left corner provide a stillness alongside the movement of the water.  With green, he creates a curvature of the river's carved-out path. 

Research revealed beneath the surface of Ravine is an earlier painting of a hillside in bloom.  It appears that Vincent found himself short of painting materials, so he sacrificed the earlier one, reused the canvas, and painted Ravine.  In doing so, a masterpiece was forever lost.🖌