What Writers Can Learn from Van Gogh

Don't practice toward perfection, rather this IS THE ART

In late November, I spent an afternoon wandering around the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam during a trip to the Netherlands. In 1880, Vincent van Gogh was 27 years old when he first decided to become an artist. His life was complicated and inspiring and tragic, and today the museum has a dedicated installment about mental health.

Much of his life is revealed through his paintings, which sounds obvious but felt distant from my own work. I believed fiction, unlike memoir or creative nonfiction, was a place I could hide as a writer. I’d only write made-up stories that have nothing to do with me. But that’s not really true, is it?

My opinions, worldviews, and past experiences appear everywhere my writing. And like Van Gogh I’m constantly trying to understand what type of artist I want to be.

The museum’s Open Up with Vincent program encourages dialogue about mental health.

Subject Versus Style

In his painting “The Potato Eaters,” Van Gogh wanted to portray real people, shown by their worn hands and weathered clothes, who worked on and with the land. When a friend criticized the piece, saying, “These are caricatures! A woman with dice for a nose? You can’t be serious!”

The Potato Eaters by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh

His friend’s remarks made Van Gogh reflect seriously on what kind of painter he wanted to be. He knew he wanted to portray real people, but how? He decided he needed to study drawing faces and figures; he practiced drawing shadows falling across trees, the movement of clothing, the contrast of colors...

He pulled elements out of bigger projects and practiced them over and over again. Today, we call this sandboxing: pulling out elements into test environments before putting them back into the larger project.

Van Gogh's actual sketchbooks where he practiced composition, style, and shapes before committing to the canvas.

Color In Contrast & Harmony

Van Gogh was a master of using colors both in harmony and in contrast. He said, “I couldn’t care less what the colors are in reality.” What he cared about was the overall effect. In his painting “The Yellow House,” he contrasted a rich blue sky against an orange roof, an impossible color for real life but the perfect complement to the blue sky. His color choice, while diverging from reality, enhances both the orange and the blue and makes for a richer visual experience.

Similarly in “Seascape near Les Saintes Maries de la Mer,” he chose to paint his name in bright red because without that red–a contrasting hit–the blues in the ocean don’t come through. He wanted the blues to pop and needed red in the waves and adding red in his name helped achieve this.

Writing in Black & White

Writers, bound by this black and white stodgy form, can also use the idea of colors in harmony and contrast. It’s the equivalent to varying your sentence length, finding rhythm, and balancing dialogue, exposition, and summary. It’s combining unlikely words or contrasting a dull conversation with physical suspense. Good storytelling creates layered richness the same way a Van Gogh painting does because writers can put unlikely ideas, words, pacing and structure together. And we have the advantage of allowing our readers to fill in the spaces between.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

How many short stories, ideas, or half-done projects do you have languishing in your drafts drawer? Are you, like me, a person who rarely returns to drafts because I didn’t nail the idea on the first go? Except hiding early ideas in our shame drawers is like missing one backyard basket and then giving up sports altogether. That is not how great artists are made.

Paint were so expensive, so Van Gogh used colored string to find colors that contrast and complement.

Practice To Get Better

Van Gogh practiced to get better. Athletes practice to get better. Writers must practice to get better. The difference for writers is that drafting looks a lot like final edits. There’s no visual difference to heighten the experience. It’s hard to tell between version 1 and version 20, even for our families and friends who see us sitting at the same desk alone in our rooms, assuring ourselves that those black and white letters are finally, perfectly being rearranged.

But that’s the work. And my big breakthrough (thanks Van Gogh) is realizing that practicing is the artform. You may be reading this thinking, duh, Meghan. But ask yourself, how are you treating certain ideas and projects in your life? Are you practicing to become the kind of artist /woodworker /baker /runner /painter /coder /teacher /farmer /manager /parent /friend, etc. you want to be? Has it occurred to you that by running, you are a runner? By writing, you are a writer? By baking, you are a baker? and so on and so forth? It doesn’t take much, other than the mental switch of believing we are the thing we are trying to be.

Practice IS THE ART

I have been crippled by perfectionism. I have mistakenly thought I should be somewhere by now. I should have finished my book. I should have published it already. I’ve misunderstood that I’ve been practicing my vocation all this time.

Like Van Gogh drawing in his sketchbook, every time I adjust a sentence, play with cadence, reword a gesture, fiddle with language, I’m setting my intentions and I am practicing.

If you go to the UNR at Lake Tahoe library, you’ll find a copy of my masters thesis: my first ever draft written in first person point of view. The book I’m writing now has 10 years of craft and technique behind it, and now it’s written in multiple close 3rd person POVs. This change from version 1 to 100 (?) is a reflection of 10+ years of practice. Perhaps more importantly, it’s proof that I have been setting my intentions, practicing, and navigating toward the kind of writer I want to be.