Reading Van Gogh: An Amateur's Search for God

by Elizabeth Barks Cox

Vincent Van Gogh, even with his mental illness, poverty, isolation, and persistent failure, reflected compassion remarkable for his own life of rejection. He loved God. He loved beauty. He acknowledged his own shortcomings and was never as good as he wanted to be. He might be an unlikely role model for some, since he was neither saintly nor successful; but his serious attention to human suffering, as well as to beauty in the world around him, gave this author a different vision. Cox writes about her own weeks spent living in a homeless shelter in New York City, a trip to the Mid-East where she visited Yasser Arafat in his compound, an unexpectedly impacting Alaskan adventure, working with abused/neglected children, and the explorations of the mind through reading. READING VAN GOGH plunges into the ideas of psychologists, artists, poets, physicists, and fiction writers who combine reason, imagination, and experience in a way that might enlarge the definitions we live by.

280 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2024

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting journey of discovering god by emulating Van Gogh. Will say I found his life far more interesting than I imagined.

[Lisa Heinsohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting window into the author’s spiritual journey