Van Gogh

Small Things.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Early April, hot midday sun, I spy a Mourning Cloak butterfly darting over frozen Caspian Lake. The water has thawed blue holes in sporadic places around the shore, but the snow still crumbles into my boots as I follow the butterfly. The butterfly darts into a stand of cedars and disappears. On this afternoon, how lovely the lake lies, just me and the boarded-up summer cottages, the rusting can used for worms or smokes emerging from its wintering over beside a porch post. The ice spreads out in varying ribbons of pale blue and pearl.

On my back through town, my boot avoids the first of miniature grape hyacinths, tiny buds and furled leaves emerging from gravel.

This spring day, Van Gogh is on my mind, his immense talent, troubled mind, these words: “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.”

Monday.

Early Evenings

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Just when it seems like the gray may finally be settling in for months, it’s tamarack season. On my way to pay the yearly property taxes today, I realized those trees were rich gold. Then that amber, too, will pass, and I’ll forget about that autumn splendor, until next year. I’m not a fan of that phrase “it’s all good,” because nothing is all good, but this autumn has been radiantly gorgeous.

Someone remarked me the other day that there’s so little time in our lives, but late fall holds a profusion of time. Night closes in early these afternoons, and our after dinner strolls along the road have ceased for now. The children sprawl before the wood stove. Our house smells of slightly overripe apples, and around us glow the last vestiges of this fall.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

– Vincent Van Gogh

fullsizerender

Woodbury Village, Vermont

 

Art and Gambling

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

My older daughter attended an art institute this summer that emphasized art for art’s sake. That’s a particular phrase that’s always rankled me, likely much to my discredit, as my daughter pointed out that art for art’s sake reigns fairly prominently in our unfinished abode. She was wholly annoyed by that proposition, too. When I asked why, she said, When I grow up, I want a salary. Clearer thinking, perhaps, than I’ve ever achieved. She doesn’t want what honestly amounts to the gambling I do with our lives.

Nonetheless, she loved this art institute. She loved the whole-hearted infusion of art, of walking across a college campus and meeting fiction writers who read thirty-second stories, of poetry slams, of improve and theater. That Government Night was run by a political filmmaker.

What if our culture truly was infused with art? If poets were valued more than CEOs? Is that so improbable? So foolish? Or too revolutionary?

But I, without a penny to my name, I still say that when it comes down to it, money is one kind of currency and painting is another.

VINCENT VAN GOGH

Photo by Molly S.

Photo by Molly S.