In fall and winter 1889–90, while a voluntary patient at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted twenty-one copies after Millet, an artist he greatly admired. He considered his copies "translations" akin to a musician's interpretation of a composer's work. He let the black-and-white images—whether prints, reproductions, or, as here, a photograph that his brother, Theo, had sent—pose "as a subject," then he would "improvise color on it." For this work of January 1890, Van Gogh squared-up a photograph of Millet's First Steps and transferred it to the canvas. 

2.    Scent: a smoky wood fire slowly dying.

3.    Sensation: Naked, being hit by a lawn sprinkler on the first summer day.

4.    Texture: mac n’ cheese

5.    Taste/Flavor: black licorice

I picked up a guitar and played stings until I heard the voice of the painting.  For me, I saw a man working hard in fields the mid day sun.  He's sweating and cursing the soil when suddenly he looks up and sees his new born baby and a breeze spreads through him and the weight of the work is gone and he opens himself up to the free fall of love.  This little chord progression and melody are the sound his heart makes as the breeze of his daughter blows through him.

2.     Scent- my dad’s work jeans

3.     Sensation- a brank swimming gently across your neck.

4.     Texture- a 🤬 carpet.

5.     Taste- how cucumbers taste from grandma’s garden.

 

My dad just planted the garden. When I go to my grandparents we would walk through the woods and before we would come home, my dad would pick a cucumber from the garden. It always tasted so good, even with the underlying taste of dirt left in my mouth. I see connections between this experience and the essence of the painting. I don’t work in video very often, but might as well since we're on vacation! I wanted to create a video that showed the new growth of cucumber plants, and the act of reaching for something.

This painting would be a recipe for “arugula jelly with goat cheese on grilled bread”. The jelly would contain all the bitterness of arugula and a bit of lemon. No sugar would be used, only the raw earthiness of the bitter arugula would be maintained. I would add pepper to it, along with some other stemmy herbs like cilantro. The paste/jelly would then be dolloped on a smear of goat cheese (the white I see in this painting, used to cut the difficulty of using green in a painting). The mixture would sit on top of toast. The toast, like the foundation pictured in the painting - a family - can be hard and supportive or mushy and uneven, it’s up to the eaters’ preference and experiences as to desired consistency.