Didi meets the painter Van Gogh and asks about each painting: "Why did you paint it like this?"
Swirling stars, golden sunflowers, and a night sky with not a single drop of black.
Let's peek into what feelings are hidden inside each painting together with Didi.
In a room full of paintings, a real artist stepped out
We were peeking into a room full of paintings in WAGZAK JUMP — when a man with a big bushy beard came stepping right out of it!
Banggu, standing beside me, squeezed the yellow balloon tight and their eyes went wide. "Didi, a real person just came out of a painting!"
Frames lined every wall, and every single one had colors so bold and deep that neither of us could look away.
"Hello, I'm the painter Van Gogh." The man tipped his hat gently and gave us a warm smile.
"Wow, did you paint all of these yourself?" I asked. He smiled back. "Shall we take a look at them one by one?"
I had so many questions. So Banggu and I decided to follow him from painting to painting and ask away.
"Why did you paint your own face forty-three times?"
The first wall was covered with faces that all looked kind of alike.
A bearded face, a face with a hat, a face in a blue coat. All the same person — but each expression just a little bit different.
"Who are all these?" I asked.
"All me. Paintings of myself — these are called 'self-portraits.'"
He started counting on his fingers, then said, "Forty-three of them in all. Over ten years."
"Forty-three times?!" I get bored after three selfies. Banggu shook their balloon and gasped, "Wow, even one is too much trouble for me!"
"I wanted to paint people, but it was hard to find anyone willing to be my model. So I kept painting myself in the mirror."
Ahh — nobody to paint, so he painted himself in the mirror. That's a little sad, but also really brave that he never gave up.
"Why is the night sky spinning around like that?"
When I stepped up to the next painting, a "Wow…" slipped out of me before I even knew it.
The night sky seemed to ripple and surge, with stars spinning round and round.
"This is 'The Starry Night,'" Van Gogh said quietly.
"But the real night sky doesn't spin like that. Why did you paint it this way?"
"To my eyes, the night sky looked alive and moving like this. I painted it while I was resting and recovering when my heart was very heavy — so the stars must have seemed so much bigger and brighter to me."
He painted this blazing, shimmering night when he was going through such a hard time. Something in my chest felt a little tight.
There was something on the left that shot upward like a flame, so I asked, "Is that fire?" — and he said it was a cypress tree. A tree that looks like a flame — Van Gogh really sees the world in such a special way.
"Why did you paint so many sunflowers?"
The next room was all yellow. A big vase overflowing with sunflowers.
"You must really love sunflowers, don't you?"
"That's right. I truly loved the sun. And sunflowers look just like the sun, so I loved them too."
Turns out these paintings have a story. His dear friend Gauguin was coming to visit, so Van Gogh painted them to decorate his studio beautifully.
"I even wrote to my brother Theo boasting, 'This is going to be a magnificent painting!'" Van Gogh laughed a little shyly.
I do the same thing — I tidy up my room when a friend comes over! Hehe. He must have been SO happy his friend was coming, if he filled a whole room with painted flowers just for him.
"Wait — it's nighttime, but you didn't use any black?"
The next painting was set at night, yet it felt warm, not dark at all. It's called 'Café Terrace at Night.'
A huge yellow gas lamp glowed brilliantly at the café, and above it stretched a blue sky dotted with stars.
"I didn't use a single drop of black here," Van Gogh said.
No black — even though it's night?!
"Only blue, purple, green, and bright yellow. The moment I dabbed each star in, one by one — that was my favorite part."
I looked super closely and there really was not one single black spot! All blue and purple. But it still looks like night — that's just amazing.
When Van Gogh mimed poking in the stars, I reached out my finger beside him and tapped along too. Haha.
"Can you create a feeling of 'rest' using only color?"
This time it was a painting of a small room. The room where Van Gogh actually lived — 'The Bedroom in Arles.'
