Title: Sometimes It’s Just Too Much
(Color Study Of Vincent Van Gogh’s The Bedroom)
Artist: Macio Becker
Date: 2025
Medium: Gouache on Paper
Size: 16” x 12.5”
In my work study, I intended to pay homage to his expressive brush strokes in a gouache abstract painting on watercolor paper, allowing color to express itself in lieu of objects, landscape, or people. Recreating the color palette from the original hue of The Bedroom (Van Gogh Museum), I layered and blended several of the colors, careful not to create too many new hues that are not from the palette. There are pops of texture, but most of the painting is flat matte. The original painting had a white frame to contrast the painting, so I have created a white border around my piece by using painter’s tape. My theme was mental illness. I wanted to invoke in the viewer a sense of disorientation and stability, of depression and optimism, movement and stillness; truly trying to put as much emotion as possible. Vincent mentioned to his brother, after working so feverishly painting, that, “I’m really falling asleep standing up, and I can’t see any longer, my eyes are so tired”, (Letter 703).