Van Gogh Sunflower Quotes

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need – connection.

The splendor of a human heart that trusts it is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.

Some of the world’s most talented people are introverts. Without them we wouldn’t have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity or Van Gogh’s sunflowers.

Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions—from the theory of evolution to van Gogh’s sunflowers to the personal computer—came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.

Van Gogh's sunflowers, it seems, are wilting, just like their real-life counterparts did.

You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.

I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that what I'm at is the painting of some great sunflowers.

But we make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions—from the theory of evolution to van Gogh’s sunflowers to the personal computer—came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.

I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that "Van Gogh was her thing" while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed everything you've ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I'm the song you'll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won't show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.

They ate dinners in drugstores. She hung a reproduction of van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” above the sofa she had bought with some of the small sum of money her parents had left her. When their aunts and uncles came to town—their parents were dead—they had dinner at the Ritz and went to the theatre. She sewed curtains and shined his shoes, and on Sundays they stayed in bed until noon. They seemed to be standing at the threshold of plenty; and Laura often told people that she was terribly excited because of this wonderful job that Ralph had lined up.

Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions—from the theory of evolution to van Gogh’s sunflowers to the personal computer—came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there. Without introverts, the world would be devoid of: the theory of gravity the theory of relativity W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” Chopin’s nocturnes Proust’s In Search of Lost Time Peter Pan Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm The Cat in the Hat Charlie Brown Schindler’s List, E.T., and Close Encounters of the Third Kind Google Harry Potter* As

How could van Gogh have been born woman? A woman would not have been sent on mission to Boringe, she would not have felt men's misery as her own crime, she would not have sought redemption; so she would never have painted van Gogh's sunflowers. And this without taking into account that the painter's kind of life - the solitude in Arles, going to cafés, whorehouses, everything that feed into van Gogh's art by feeding his sensibility - would have been prohibited to her. A woman could never have become Kafka: in her doubts and anxieties, she would never have recognised the anguish of Man driven from paradise.

Van Gogh completed two series of still life paintings of sunflowers. The earlier series was executed in Paris in 1887, depicting the flowers lying on the ground, while the second series was undertaken a year later in Arles, portraying bouquets of sunflowers in a vase. Van Gogh had hoped to welcome and impress his artist friend Gauguin with a Sunflowers work, which he hung in the guestroom of his Yellow House where Gauguin stayed. In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote, “It is a kind of painting that rather changes in character, and takes on a richness the longer you look at it. Besides, you know, Gauguin likes them extraordinarily. He said to me among other things, ‘That...it’s...the flower.’ You know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is somewhat my own.

You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.

Smith suggests that we are more driven by our loves than our ideas because we are more desiring beings than thinking beings. We have thoughts and ideas, but what’s behind them is our deeply held loves, idols, hopes, and imaginations. To bring it home to our own school communities: if what really drives people is their affections rather than their thoughts, the primary task of the Christian school is to shape our students’ loves and desires. Smith says, “What if education ... is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? What if we began by appreciating how education not only gets into our head but also (and more fundamentally) grabs us by the gut? What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions – our visions of ‘the good life’ – and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect?”29 Bold implication: How do we use student literacy to shape loves and desires? What about science? Chapel? Recess? I get excited to think about our schools grabbing students by the gut! That’s truly distinctive. It’s infectious and contagious. We should hope to find new ways to employ our curriculum to love God, what He loves and His gospel, because it’s life-giving. Yes, we want students to get excited when they learn about Van Gogh’s sunflowers, but we also hope that through their learning, they come to love God and others more. That’s a challenging task; it’s a lot harder than attaching a verse to a lesson. However, we must dare to accept the endeavor because we don’t want to see students merely conform to boundaries set before them. We want to see them transform, and we fully believe that this only happens when students come to love God because they see how much they need Him and how good He is. This is where life-long change happens. This is where a foundation built at our schools can stick with them into college and life. This drives our missional hope and confidence because we believe the gospel restores people; it restores families; it restores culture. Maybe, we should speak of a worldview as engaging the world through an embodiment of beliefs. As Christians, this looks like embodying the core tenants of the faith – embodying need, embodying thanksgiving, embodying hope, embodying rescue and restoration. When we take on these beliefs, our desires change. This is especially true as the Spirit transforms us through our habits being brought into conformity with these beliefs. As a result, much of the conversation about the Christian worldview must consider what it will look like when the gospel starts to seep and ooze out of us.

One rainy summer's day in 2007, I had the opportunity to visit a village on the bank of a river where Van Gogh spent his final days. Walking through a field of wheat, I came to a quiet village cemetery. The artist shot himself in the chest at the age of 37. He had sold only one painting while he was alive. Next to him lies his brother Theo, who died just six months after him. After leaving Van Gogh's very tiny room on the second story of the Auberge Ravoux, I walked on and on, down the country road. The rain stopped and the sunflowers swayed in the breeze.

You know that the peony is Jeannin’s, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is somewhat my own.

pausing before Sunflowers as though personally responsible for introducing the artist to the group. ‘Impasto – see how thick he lays on the paint. Uses the canvas as a pallet! And another van Gogh–see the many strokes.’  Jack was astonished by the effect of the scene before him: a bright yellow sunset, in the foreground a man in a field. Not worked with the brushstrokes that he was familiar with, but rather, the image was created by thousands of tiny dashes in as many colourful shades. Immediately beside it was a painting by Georges Seurat.

Suppose you could speak nothing but money And acrimony. Suppose all the sunflowers Van Gogh destroyed, all the stones in Virginia’s Pockets & all the stones Georgia painted as vaginas Were simply a matter of making something greater Than money. Prince taught us a real man has A beautiful woman in him. Suppose we cannot Forget what happened in Money. Suppose You’re someone who celebrates Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday. Suppose he was someone whose love For a black woman was blinded by blackness, Hers & his, yours & mine. I ain’t mad at you, Assassin. It’s not the bad people who are brave I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.

south of France, where he embraced the sunny, light cuisine of Provence—as bright as a Van Gogh sunflower.