[Raging Deadstar]

Possum said:
Umm, hang on now. No offense, but I don't think Van Gogh should be described as an insane alcoholic

Troubled, yes. He did kill himself, so there's no disputing that he had some problems upstairs. On the other hand, he was an artist. If you look carefully, a majority of truly great artists were/are a little bit psychologically off center. I have no real personal insight here, because I am an engineer through and through; there is little or no poetry in my soul.

But I don't have to personally understand it in order to recognise the fact that artists, or great artists at any rate, tend to be a bit wacky.

And as far as an alcoholic...do you have any documentary evidence of that? I'm not saying it isn't true, just that I'd never heard it before

Oh, and Pierre Auguste Renoir, (another Impressionist, and a rough contemporary of Van Gogh), was a notable exception to my point above. The man was apparently just obnoxiously normal, happy, and well-adjusted. His wife appears in many of his best paintings, for land's sake!

Well said! It's true that most Artists are slightly "wacky". Hell, some of the Artists I've studied in my work are just weird, if not "psychologically off-center" then slightly quirky. One you will all probably know was Salvidor Dali, strange strange man