Vincent van Gogh is well-known as one of the most influential painters of the post-Impressionist style and, beyond that, as one of the most well-regarded artists of the Western world. To some, he was a talented painter at the end of the 1800s. To others, he was a lunatic who cut off his own ear. To many, he's the epitome of the "tortured artist" archetype.
He was first introduced to me as the man who ate yellow paint.
Of course, I had seen "Starry Night" and "Bedroom in Arles" before, but I didn't know anything about the man behind them. But then I went online and looked him up, and the first thing that came up besides a Wikipedia article was some WordPress piece on how van Gogh struggled with mental illness and thought happiness was the color yellow-- and he ate yellow paint to try and soothe his depression with pigmented happiness.
At first, like a lot of people, I found the idea romantic. It fits so nicely into the ideal of miserable artistic beauty: something painfully hopeful, tormented and breathtaking. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that eating yellow paint isn't like that; it's just miserable, just painful, just tortured. It's mental illness. It's grasping at the most imaginative of straws for a shred of happiness.
And then I thought about it more, and I thought of something. How many of us have a yellow paint? How many of us do so many toxic things, hurt ourselves, just to try for a little happiness? I know so many people who suck in 10 cigarettes a day just to calm their nerves. I have so many friends who drink a 40 a night and smoke weed daily trying to cope with stress and the challenges of their lives. I watch people stay in relationships that are no good for them just because they find more comfort in being in a bad relationship than in no relationship at all.
We all know that these toxic things, these yellow paints, are no good for us. Like with van Gogh, they don't even actually bring us the happiness we so desire, the healing we're so desperate for. Guys, don't eat your yellow paint. Paint the sunshine, then throw it away, and find something that makes you smile for you. And don't forget; sometimes, it's okay to use the blue paint too. You can't make irises without them.
