Van Gogh Alive Experience

Van Gogh is an artist that my parents love and so I have grown up hearing about him and his paintings. We booked tickets to the Van Gogh Alive - the experience. I didn't really know what to expect besides his artworks being projected up onto the walls, but with the way that the kids embraced art during Covid I thought they might enjoy the experience so we got tickets. James took the Tuesday off too so that he could join us which I loved.

We drove to Centennial Park and walked over to the exhibition. Out the front we put on our masks made by Erica from East of Africa. Louise was just finishing the exhibit with Ivy so jumped into our family photo. James looks so funny!

We enjoyed the lovely sunflowers out the front and the fun with the mirrors and reflections.

We headed inside and got confused by which way to go, so we followed the line from most people that took us past information about Van Gogh's artworks. They had set up a 3D version of his painting of his bedroom which was cool to look at. The kids asked questions about his room and we discussed similarities and differences between his room and theirs.

We then looked at the information about his different paintings and were taken for a journey through his life. The kids struggled with this part because you had to wait for the people infront to finish reading before you could move on, due to Covid. But they liked hearing the information as we read it out.

I liked this quote as you entered the main room. 'To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one's fling from time to time, smoke one's pipe, and drink one's coffee in peace.' I do think that Van Gogh would have been a very blunt man and said what he thought. Difficult to relate to and understand but I'd respect him for taking a stand for what he believed and felt.

When we entered the main room it was stunning. There were projectors displaying his paintings all around the rooms. It was a bit overwhelming in knowing where to sit and stand and where to look. We found a space in the middle that had the paintings even projected on the floor. Some people were sitting and others were standing. Kids were with their parents, not running around, so we had the kids sit on the floor to look at the paintings. It was stunning to look around but was hard to know where exactly to look.
 

The kids were great with sitting and watching the paintings. They asked questions about what the paintings were of, enjoyed seeing some of them move (like the train travel on the track, the stars twinkle in the sky, the water move in the sea, the boats bobbing up and down on the water, etc.).

Alexander loved that the paintings on the floor moved. It just blew his mind as you can hear here.

Eliza loved the red poppies in this painting

When one of the last paintings came up of the field of poppies with the black crows and then you hear a gun shot and the crows flew away, one of the kids asked what that was for. I told them that farmers would do that to scare away the crows. James whispered to me that it was actually implying that was the field where Van Gogh took his life. I agreed but sure wasn't going to explain that to the kids. 

The movie finished so we decided to move over near the quotes screen to watch the whole thing because I wanted to be able to read the quotes that Van Gogh said as well as appreciate his amazing paintings. Eliza wanted each of the quotes read out. Daniel was quite interested in the paintings and was paying a lot of attention to it all. 

Alexander moved around a bit from on his own, to onto me to next to James but he did pretty well to not disturb others.

Some of his quotes really were inspirational. I liked this one. It is very true when things come to change and needing to start fresh.

This quote made me think of Eliza. She just loves to draw and takes a lot of joy when she does draw.

In this painting the train drove around the walls. Alexander was quite excited by this.

Eliza loved the sunflowers. Back when we did Van Gogh's paintings when we did the art gallery, Eliza did her own version on the sunflowers. She loved seeing them enlarged.

She is my little ray of sunshine.

I loved looking over and seeing Daniel and James sitting together like this and chatting about the artworks.

This was one of my favourite ones, having the water moving and the lights reflected off it. It even had a few shooting starts.

This year, this quote has rung true in my life. Close friends really are treasures.

Towards the end Alexander was getting a bit over it so came and sat on my lap.

 What a complex man Van Gogh was! He was so very creative but not really heard or understood. He saw the bigger picture (quotes like his artwork will see value once I'm gone). He knew the importance of family. He took pride in his art. But he was also so very confused and crazy. Cutting off his own ear, ending his own life. I am sorry for him having such a troubled time, especially towards the end. It was great to be able to have a glimpse of his life through his artwork and his quotes. I wish that I could have sat there and watched it another time or 2 just to try and absorb it all, but the kids weren't up for that so we headed out.

We headed over to the Entertainment Complex in search for ice cream as a special treat and then we headed home.

It was a very fun day. I'm glad that we went out. I felt very safe during it all. Just would have liked to have the space to absorb it all a bit more but that's ok. It was nice to do together too.