When I first saw this painting, it felt like someone had finally painted the world the same way I saw it: exploding with color in all its crooked splendor. L’Eglise d’ Auvers-sur-Oise made me fall in love with Van Gogh, and when I traveled to Auvers-sur-Oise as a young student, and saw the actual church, I burst into tears and I couldn’t say why. Words couldn’t capture the visceral experience of seeing Van Gogh.
This broken man had looked at this plain little church, and painted it pulsing and shimmering right off the canvas.
Did he see the ordinary church and reinterpret it his way?
Or did he look at the building and see centuries of wishes, hopes, tears, and prayers all swirling together into a vibrant mind-bending dazzling cloud, bursting with sacred irreverence … the church and the art soothing jagged-edged souls and healing broken hearts, century after century… generation after generation…
