We recently visited the Monastere St. Paul de Mausole in St. Remy de Provence, France which was an insane asylum in the late 19th Century and is presently a psychiatric hospital. The most famous patient there was Vincent Van Gogh and today you can walk the beautiful grounds and see the room where Van Gogh lived for a little over a year. During that brief time, he painted over 140 paintings---one of which is the now famous "Starry, Starry Night."
http://www.avignon-et-provence.com/saint-paul-mausole/
While his bedroom is small and sparsely furnished, the view from his window is beautiful, overlooking the gardens, fields and Provencal countryside, complete with the twisted trees shaped by mistral winds. So, considering the bleakness of psychiatric care in the late 19th Century and treatments that Van Gogh endured, I couldn't help but think about the paintings--the many, many paintings he created here. And I couldn't help but think about what that process must have brought him intellectually and emotionally.
There's something transcendent about the process of making art. Virtually every artist I know has experienced being in that very different state of mind. The creation process is invigorating and absorbing. The level of concentration is so complete that you can lose track of time. Someone can talk to you and you miss what they're saying.
Once a friend and I painted en plein air five days in a row, morning and evenings each day. We were so immersed in the process, that we found ourselves having trouble expressing ourselves in words. How weird is that? We concluded that we were spending so many hours per day in the right brain, that our left brains were having trouble connecting.
So while we walked through the Monastere St. Paul de Mausole, I found myself absorbed by thoughts of Van Gogh's process. I don't think of his paintings as an expression of his mental illness, but rather as an expression of the part of him that was whole. While you need determination and practice to create the paintings you imagine in your mind's eye, there's also tremendous satisfaction in completing a painting that meets your own expectations.
Because of the brilliance of his work, there will be speculation about Van Gogh's mental state for centuries. Books will be written and dissertations published--all about a man who never saw success in his lifetime. I like to think that the process of painting gave him the best moments of his life.
