Van Gogh and Me

I painted this about twenty years ago. It was my way of connecting to Van Gogh's early paintings of humble objects in dark tonalities. For all that, it's a very American picture. There's something frank about these vegetables that makes them more ordinary than humble. I got them at the grocery store (I didn't grow them).

Young artists are discouraged from engaging the art of the past in a direct way, and even if someone were to imitate Van Gogh, they'd be advised to look at the bright "modern" pictures. But all Van Gogh's images grew out of his peculiar personality and early and late works are equally his.

And my imitation of Van Gogh is uniquely mine. I drew something after Van Gogh's manner the way that Van Gogh himself explored the imagery of Rembrandt, Delacroix and Millet -- the way that Matisee explored images of Cezanne's, the way Diebenkorn borrowed from Matisse, and so on. You don't reinvent the wheel. You don't imitate the wheel exactly either. In this case -- you contemplate it.