Reena’s Exploration Challenge #123 — silent scream

Sunset at Montmajour by Vincent van Gogh, painted 1888, discovered in 2013

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in the Netherlands and died 37 years later, in 1890 in France. Born to a minister father and an artist mother, he worked towards being a priest but then rejected the structure of the church. Instead he moved to a beleaguered coal mine town to minister in the south of Belgium and was called, “Christ of the Coal Mines.”

Vincent traveled from country to country, place to place, looking for a sense of peace within himself. He turned to painting for solace and fought with his inner demons who were reflected in the eyes of the villagers wherever he lived. In a decade’s time he created 2100 artworks, including 43 self-portraits. He found himself in and out of asylums by choice and decree in the last years of his life. He…