The original Starry Night was painted in June 1889 and is in MOMA, New York. Moreover, it is known from Van Gogh’s letters that he was not happy with Starry Night.
You know, Van Gogh liked to copy and compared it with music and would find consolation in copying other works of art (letter to Theo of September 20, 1889).
I thought of what Van Gogh would say when he looked at my copy of his work. When such an idea comes to mind, you are trying hard to show off. I was doing my best and I always do my best while working with glass.
First, glass is a completely different material. Glass frit and glass powder. You have your palette of colours, but it can not be mixed together. Moreover, I confidently began to make a Starry Night out of material I never worked with - from medium sized frit. At first I thought it would not work. Then with a new technique I completed my version of Starry Night in 25 hours.
Secondly, it is absolutely clear to me how to create this work by painting with glass powder (the description of the technique can be found here). Furthermore, I drew the village in Starry Night with glass powder. If I were to use medium-grained frit, I could not achieve such accuracy. The houses, fields and frontal trees were created with powder while the sky, stars, mountains and gardens of trees was made with medium sized frit.
I made comparison pictures to compare the two Starry Nights side by side.
Thirdly, I will be happy to show you my rhythm and my steps as I was creating the work. Here in this order was the progression of my starry night.
After final fusing.
What did Van Gogh think when he painted this picture? There are thousands of interpretations. What did I think when I worked on this picture? About Van Gogh. I read his letters, read the two-volume book of the 2010 Taschen Complete Collection of Paintings. My son presented me this book for the New Year in 2012. I also thought about how my vision of Van Gogh is completely different now ... In 2012, I did not know how to approach when creating such a piece with glass. And now I pretty quickly managed to make Starry Night using techniques invented by me.
Here is the article about the Starry Night and 10 facts that you did not know about the Starry Night by Van Gogh. There is something to think about. Van Gogh considered this work a failure. And he wrote the view from the east window 21 times, but he never wrote a grille on the windows.
I want to quote from Van Gogh. He writes to Brother Theo on July 10, 1888
"But the sight of the stars always makes me dream in as simple a way as the black spots on the map, representing towns and villages, make me dream.
Why, I say to myself, should the spots of light in the firmament be less accessible to us than the black spots on the map of France.
Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to go to a star.20 What’s certainly true in this argument is that while alive, we cannot go to a star, any more than once dead we’d be able to take the train. So it seems to me not impossible that cholera, the stone, consumption, cancer are celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, omnibuses and the railway are terrestrial ones.
To die peacefully of old age would be to go there on foot."
