Van Gogh never claimed to have arrived. Across his letters he wrote of himself as someone still seeking, still working — "I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart" — years before anyone outside his family took his work seriously.
He admitted he didn't have it yet. What he had was the hunt. The daily, unglamorous work of chasing something better than what he'd made the day before.
He wasn't waiting for talent to arrive and do the work for him. He treated skill as something built through repetition, failure, and showing up again the next morning — the same discipline he'd apply to a single painting a thousand times before anyone called him a master.
“Onward, onward” wasn't a slogan. It was how he actually worked — one honest attempt after another, with no guarantee any of it would matter.
I was fortunate to have the chance to sit beside them while they worked — my closest friend, Gilberto, and his mentor, both well known in their own country and beyond it, though never as famous as Vincent. I'd sit close while they worked, and they'd talk — not really to me, more like thinking aloud, the way a gardener mutters to his plants, forgetting anyone's nearby. "Look how that shadow plays against the rest." "See how the light in those back trees carries the whole painting." I listened like a sponge, because it was the closest to real art-making I'd ever get.
Were they striving for perfection? Both of them, always. Were they famous the way Van Gogh became? No, but they were dedicated the way he was.
Their art was their whole life. It asked for everything, long days,
longer nights, and gave back real joy in the same breath.
Molins J.
What are you still hunting for,
and are you willing to keep showing up before you're good at it?
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If this resonated, you might also enjoy: Goya on ” Balance” and Emily Carr on "Persistence"