#243 - Looking out the window with Van Gogh

An episode from 10/12/26: Tonight, I read a letter than Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother in the spring of 1883, when Van Gogh was in his early thirties. It can stand in for many of his letters in how it documents what he saw that day, the joy that it gave him, and his plans to transform the people and landscapes he observed into numerous studies and then a final, larger work.

After thinking aloud about this letter, though, I ask the broader question about creativity: why did Van Gogh choose to make this his life... and why do creative people anywhere do the things that they do... and why, for thousands of years, has it been essential to human life to seek out the experience of art and culture?

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