​It’s a Helluva Blue, by Amy Jones Sedivy

The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1889

​It’s a Helluva Blue
 
“Vincent Van Gogh understood colour,” I said, walking the trail to the Hollywood sign. The sky that day glowed bright blue and Brody said it was the blue of the skies in Mickey Mouse cartoons. I said it was like a giant Pantone colour chip laid across the whole of Los Angeles, and then that’s when I said this thing about Van Gogh.
 
He went on, as if he didn’t hear me (later he would say, I didn’t hear you). “The applications are due for Making Art in L.A., like next week.”
 
“Yeah. I’m almost done with mine.” My mind was still on Vincent and the colour blue in his Starry Night painting which was not this blue—it was after all, nighttime in his painting—but if he was here right now, he would paint this blue because he understood it. I think this way because I think that I understand it. I am a painter, after all. I teach painting at a college, I paint in my studio, I show once a year (if I’m lucky) in a gallery. I tell myself I understand colour but then I wonder if what I understand is this: if I were ever to paint a canvas and use this colour for the sky, the verdict from the art world would be saccharine, schmaltzy, amateur. What I need to do, what I want to do, is go see the painting in person so I can really assess just how Van Gogh understood that sky, that blue. Where is it? Paris, London. I ask Brody and he says, MOMA.
 
“Can we go there?” I say. “Can we afford a trip to New York?”
 
“Why do you suddenly want to see that particular painting?”
 
I consider being exasperated but hold back and just say, “Like I said, Van Gogh understood colour.”
 
He nodded, then said, “When did you say that?”
 
The Hollywood sign was around the next corner so I sped up and ran the incline – to get away. To get closer to the sky.
 
Brody was okay as a boyfriend, especially since we are both artists. All – mostly all – of my previous boyfriends had also been artists and maybe that doesn’t work. So maybe I would stop dating artists but then I met Brody and so far it’s working out. Sort of. He doesn’t make any dismissive remarks about my work like so many others did. He’s relatively complimentary. Actually, he spaces out when he looks at my paintings and says almost nothing. Perhaps that’s best.
 
On our third date, at Huntington Library, we went to see the Kehinde Wiley painting of Obama, and also walk through the gardens.
 
“Look how Wiley flattens the canvas,” I said.
 
“Creepy in here with all these other old portraits,” Brody said, sweeping his arm to encompass the 18th-century full-length portraits that shared the space with Obama.
 
“I think that’s the point,” I said. I wanted to admire Wiley’s work but Brody was already walking to the door. “I guess we're going to the gardens now,” I said aloud to no one. Maybe to Obama.
 
We were wandering the cactus garden, which is huge, goes on forever with winding paths and a zillion different cactuses. Cacti. I love the strange shapes. I took a lot of pictures, knowing these would appear in some form in my paintings.
 
I said, “I love these so much.”
 
“They are wild, I’ve never seen a lot of these before. They’re like aliens.”
 
“They are like aliens, and look at the way they grow from one part onto the next, sometimes growing bigger than the base where it started. Some of them are like mutants” (he is uh-huhing as I talk) “in that they change form the farther they get from the base, I wonder if being drought resistant shapes them. I have a friend who is a cactus expert and when she got married, she asked for cactus plants as the only gift they wanted—they were planning a big cactus garden at their new house. Imagine that, a whole bunch of cactus for a wedding present.”
 
“Yep, me too.”
 
“You too? You mean you want cactus for a wedding present?”
 
“Huh? Who said anything about a wedding?”
 
I was going to say, I did just now, but he looked so surprised, I was confused and so I let it slide.
 
I look up the cheapest flights from LA to NYC. I look up the cheapest hotels. I add up everything and there is no way for us to go to MOMA. We just don’t have the money for such an extravagance. I am sad about this and tell Brody that I am sad.
 
“Why did you want to go?” he asks.
 
“MOMA. Van Gogh. Starry Night.” I swear I've told him this five times already in the three days since that hike.
 
“You can see it online.”
 
“You know that is not a substitute for seeing any painting in person.”
 
“Go see the Van Gogh at the Norton Simon. Don’t they have a couple?”
 
“Yes. But not Starry Night. I need to see his blue.”
 
Brody looks up (he listened to me!) the Norton Simon’s collection and shows me the images. “There is the Mulberry Tree. It has a blue sky.”
 
So we go, late in the afternoon. Pasadena is a short drive from DTLA and we wind up the Arroyo Seco freeway and into the museum parking lot.
 
I stand in front of the Mulberry Tree with its blue sky. A different blue than Starry Night but it is Van Gogh’s particular blue, like one that exists just for him.
 
Brody stood next to me, looking around the gallery and not at the painting.
 
“It is a helluva blue. You know it’s made from lapis lazuli,” I said.
 
“We took the same class, of course I know.”
 
“Look how different his sky is from the old paintings,” I said. “How the sky is as much an object as the tree is. How like everything is foreground. How different that was back then. I wish I could have been there.”
 
“Uh-huh. Hey, did you ever see that Doctor Who episode where the Doctor meets Van Gogh and takes him to the future so he can …”
 
“See how his paintings are loved. Yes, I showed you that one. You’ve never watched Doctor Who except for that one episode. That I showed you.”
 
“So, are you done and want to get dinner?”
 
Back in our adjoining studios at the Brewery, I said, “So inspired! Gotta paint.”

Brody said, “I agree,” and went to watch basketball on his giant screen TV.
 
I stood in front of one of the three paintings I was working on, one with a blue-faced person that I was trying to keep from looking like an extra in Avatar. I kept thinking about lapis lazuli and Van Gogh and that I would never understand colour, never understand blue, and never understand why Brody had this gap where I slipped through and disappeared.
 
Amy Jones Sedivy
 
Amy Jones Sedivy grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in NELA (Highland Park) with her artist-husband and their princess-dog. She recently retired and spends her time reading, writing, and exploring the rest of Los Angeles. With a husband who is an artist, she spends a lot of time in galleries and museums, so most of her stories are about artists or artist-adjacent characters. The rest are about musicians.