[Vincent is sitting in a simple wooden chair downstage center.

He speaks like hes telling a

fairytale.]
Vincent: When I was born, my parents were poor and they already had one still-born son. I had a
little brother though, his name was Theo. We got into a really bad financial situation and
I had to leave school after a few years. I started working for my uncle when I was fifteen
years old. He was an art dealer and I was fluent in French, German, Dutch, and English.
He eventually sent me off to London. I fell in love with art galleries and my landlady. I
could only ask one of them to marry me and she rejected me. I got so depressed that I
threw away every single book I owned and I had started to get very angry with all of the
customers at work. I was fired, so I devoted my life to god, and the only book I had was a
bible. I taught a boys school and began to preach. I remember taking the entrance exam to
the School of Theology in Amsterdam and they wanted me to learn the dead language of
poor people, but of course I refused and then they refused to let me into their school. I
eventually ended up at volunteering at coal mines through working with the Church of
Belgium, but they let me go too because I had become a martyr. The miners loved me
though, they called me Christ of the Coal Mines. I would draw pictures of them and
minster their sick. I moved to Brussels and I wanted to be an artist full time and Theo, of
course being an art dealer, decided to support me. I studied on my own and received
higher education. During this time, I fell in love with Kate, my cousin, but she was
disgusted by me. I moved again back with my parents for a short while and then I fell in
love with Clasina Maria Hoornik, my beautiful Sien. She was my companion and my
model. I moved out of parents home very shortly after this. After a couple of years, she
wanted to go back to being an alcoholic prostitute and my family threatened to cut me off
unless I left her and The Hague. I was depressed again, or maybe just more depressed. I
left when I was about thirty years old and I decided to be a nomad in Drenthe. For a
month and a half I moved around the district painting its land and its people. I wanted to
capture peasant life and the way their bodies withered with their souls. Art was my only
love; she never left me. I got bored in Drenthe and I moved back in with my parents. In
85 I finished my very first masterpiece, or personal failure, as I like to call it. It was the
Potato Eaters. Instead of getting depressed I went for more education in Antwerp. I loved
the Japanese artists and Peter Ruben. But, rent was just too much, so I begged Theo to let
me stay with him, and he agreed. I made friends with a lot of the Paris Impressionists.
The colors and the lights, it was just too pure and beautiful. It was silly, the days we
would pose for each other for our paintings, because we needed to save money. I wanted
to travel east and go to Japan, but it was too much. Some of my friends told me about
Arles and how the light there was like the light in Japan. They didnt leave with me, but I
ended up moving into my little yellow house and thats when things changed, drastically.
From the very beginning I was so enthralled that I would choose my paints over food. I
painted sunflowers for my dear Gauguin, Paul Gauguin. But I ate bread and drank coffee
and absinthe. This was about 88. Just like in Paris, Paul and I got to arguing again. It was

different though, one night he walked out on me. Razor in hand, I cut off part of my left
ear [finally he turns around to show the missing piece of his left ear. He remains facing
the audience]. Then I went to the brothel and I found Rachel, and I said to her, guard
this carefully. The next morning, the police were at my door and I got admitted. It was
only at this point did I realize the toll that my lifestyle had taken on my health. I had been
having violent seizures, but those first few days in the hospital were the worst because I
was so weak from blood loss. I remember that Christmas Theo had come to visit me. I
was released from the hospital and I simply stayed in the yellow house during the day and
the hospital at night. Now, the rumors of me eating paint and sipping turpentine. I had
ingested paint before, on accident. I would hold my brushes in my mouth, because I only
have two hands, and sometimes, I would stick the paint end in my mouth and not the
handle end. I did think about eating the paint sometimes. I thought that maybe the yellow
would either kill me or make me happy, or maybe both. The people in Arles were scared
of me and they forced me out. I moved to another asylum in Saint-something-somethingProvence. They let me paint the hospital gardens. I painted Irises and the Starry Night
here. And I got them exhibited in Brussels. Then Theo was selling The Red Vineyards for
400 francs. That would be close to fifteen hundred dollars now. Theo scared me one day
and I thought he would no longer sell my paintings. I got so scared. All I have ever
wanted was to have notoriety, to create a school of art. I knew part of that was gone and
then I had just lost the other half, or so I thought. So I shot myself in the chest. Two days
later, July 29th, 1890, I died at the age of 37 in my brothers arms. In my lifetime I
created over two thousand pieces. I never saw the wealth created by them, but that was
never that important to me. I just wanted the world to see itself through my eyes.