One of my friends sent to me email about Vincent Van Gough that I would like to share it with you. It reminded me my childhood and our family summer vacation in the most picturesque land you have ever seen, Crimea. 

Crimea is a peninsula between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Its climate is similar to that of northern California with its cool and breezy mornings and evenings. Its copious mountains, tall trees, and subtropical exotic plants created a lavish panorama, and its warm azure seawater was luxurious to bathe in.

Crimea is known for its more than 600 curative and preventive health centers, many curative mud deposits, 200 mineral springs, and essential oils. Yalta, the largest city in Crimea with population of about 85,000. It is home to a famous health resort that opened in 1783.                       

The Russian author Anton Chekhov wrote his novels and stage plays there, and Russian tsars and their families vacationed each July at the beautiful palace in Livadia, several miles north of Yalta.

  Close to Yalta is located one of the Neo-Gothic  chateau fantastiques, The Swallow’s Nest. Can you imagine to build such a beautiful palace right at the edge of the cliff, overlooking an endless expanse of the Black Sea.

Every morning of our vacation in Yalta, we opened the big Venetian windows in our spacious apartment on the beach and gazed at the endless expense of sea and sunny blue sky. Before going to sleep at night, we were again attracted to the sky, this time to gaze at the Milky Way, which looked like millions of stars had swept across the sky in a single brush stroke. There in Crimea I saw close for the first time stars falling toward earth and never reaching it.

I understood why Van Gogh created his blue and grey painting, Starry Night. Perhaps, he thought that he could stop a flow of time and engrave into his painting a unique moment of a beautiful world of nature, night stars and energy they constantly send to the earth. Even so, it’s known, the stars cannot live when there is no energy to keep them burning. It’s the same for people. We cannot live without energy and need it to keep us going. Healthy energy that can come to us from different sources, including art.

From email: Vincent Van Gogh was only 37 when he took his own life… most do not realize that he was wrong… You have heard the song many times but the presentation clearly chronicles that this song was written in memory of Vincent Van Gogh, a a tribute by Don McLean, in the seventies. It is rumored that Van Gogh’s painting of Starry Night was painted during his confinement in an asylum and that he sold only one painting during his lifetime as he was nameless at that time. That’s perhaps what caused him to fail into an abyss of depression which eventually led to his suicide. How tragic for him to have felt so hopeless and misunderstood in spite of being so gifted! It was a pity that medical science was not yet ready to help him.

So, sit back and be entralled by the works of Vincent Van Gogh. Please turn on your speakers to enjoy the presentation, look closele at the paintings and listen to the music. Click on the link below and get a session of healing art therapy.

                                                                    vangogh

Source: Mama’s Home Remedies: Discover Time Tested Secrets of Good Health and The Pleasures of Natural Living by Svetlana Konnikova, Aurora Publishers, 2008

Powerpoint presentation of Vincent Van Gogh paintings. Song-tribute Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) composed and performed by Don McLean

Copyright 2009.