Going through stuff, I just found my “Van Gogh in Arles” engagement book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the weekly calendar I used for one of the most exciting years of my life. In February, I took a class taught by Virginia Lewis: “Textiles of India, Indonesia, and Japan,” through the University of California at Berkeley Extension. Virginia was the niece of author, Sinclair Lewis, the first American author to win the Nobel Prize in literature. She was an interior designer in San Francisco. Virginia took me under her wing, and occasionally invited me to lunch at her flat, above a grocery store in North Beach. I remember when I told her I was going to New York. She said “Just don’t be a dilettante.”
In the summer of that year I moved to New York City, arriving on a Sunday, and began painting class at the Art Students League the following day.
The spirit of Vincent had inspired me eight months prior, when I saw an extensive collection of his drawings and paintings at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and at the Kroller-Mueller Museum (located in the middle of the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo) in the Netherlands. In his ten years as an artist Vincent produced approximately 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings!
A few months ago I brought “Starry Night” to a small group for drawing inspiration. Above, you’ll see my rendition using pencil and oil pastels.