"I want something serious, something fresh — something with soul in it! Onward, onward." — Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, The Hague, 3 January 1883. Letter 298.
Through working hard, Van Gogh wrote, "I'm hunting it and fighting for it." The story of a man who never claimed to have arrived — only to keep going. Onward, onward.
"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. / The sleep of reason produces monsters."— Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Plate 43 (1799).
Everyone quotes half of it. Goya's own caption said the fuller thing — reason and imagination aren't enemies. They need each other.
"It's climbing and striving for something always beyond."— Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr
For fifteen years, Emily Carr nearly gave up painting. What she did with that gap changed what came after.