Wednesday, October 10, 2007

DAIO

Sieun Lim
Ms. Wieringa
Drawing
10 October 2007





This drawing is by Vincent van Gogh, and it is entitled Winter Garden. This artwork was made with a pen and ink and created in 1884. The landscape was based on Gogh’s hometown. In the foreground of the piece, there are two twisted and dark trees on a lane and a man who are too dark to recognize his figure standing between them, and both left and right side of the road show some rural fields. The middle ground continues to show the scenery of rural town with the road, but there is no tree on the road in this part. Then, there is a vague building that looks like a church in the background.

On the Winter Garden, Vincent van Gogh put some elements of art to make his drawing impressive. First of all, he used sharp and twisty lines for drawing the tress which express his personal agony or sorrow. As it is called Winter Garden, the big empty space of the sky brings feelings of coldness and isolation to the picture. In addition, the simple and dark color of brown makes the drawing more serious and gloomy. Gogh put strong shading to make the foreground vivid. On the other hand, he made the background dull and faint, for example, compared to the dark trees in the foreground, the church in the background is hard to be seen. This contrast of darkness creates a distance in the landscape and makes it more realistic and 3-D. Also, there are several principles of art in the piece. A composition of main objects, the trees and the man, in the middle ground makes the drawing visually balanced, and a strong contrast of light and dark values from the trees and the man create an emphasis on the picture. Also, the movement from the twisty lines of the trees makes them look like wrenching and screaming like a human.

The picture looks so sad and lonely to me. As every creature dies in winter, things in the drawing look ending their lives. Especially, the dark man on the drawing seems to have short time before his death and to struggle with his great emotional pain as the two trees by him writhe in agony. Looking at the place far away from him, he must miss someone in that place and want to meet that person before his death. However, the distance between the man and the vague place in the background looks so far from each other, so I think that it might be going to be a sad ending at last.

I like this drawing by Vincent van Gogh who is my most famous artist. Although most of his drawings and paintings are negative, sad, and gloomy, I love to see his effort to express his emotions sincerely and honestly through his artworks. Therefore, his art is unique and different from other normal realistic art. Gogh has strength of inspiring his emotions to the audience, so it made me feel like being in the place of the Winter Garden when I saw it. Although I was firstly shocked by the dark mood of the Winter Garden, I wanted to go and find more deep inside of the story in the drawing. I love art works that mentally influence on me, and Gogh’s pictures always give me exciting emotional experience as I look at them.




Work Cited
Gogh,Vincent van. Winter Garden. 1884 .Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. 10 October 2007.
<http://www3.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?lang=en>

2 comments:

julie Park said...

You said Vincent van Gogh is your most famous artist. why? and how this picture influence to your art work?

sieun said...

I like Gogh's artworks because there is some uniqueness on it. Each drawing or painting by him expresses more emotions and feelings than drawings by other artists. This picture influences my artworks by showing how colors and lines can affect to express emotions of the object like the dark twisting trees on the picture.