 Hello and welcome to a real conversation between two native English speakers. I'm Adam Navas and with me is Liz Wade. Hello Liz. Hi Adam. Today we're talking about the program The Hidden Life of Vincent Van Gogh. Now you might hear some people say Van Gogh. Same person, different pronunciation. This is a very, we should, we should talk about this a little bit later, but yes. So there are definitely different ways to pronounce Van Gogh. Yeah, there we go. I'm going to say Van Gogh. Okay, well we'll save that conversation for a second. If you haven't listened to that program, make sure you check it out. We'll put it in the links below or up above. If it's your first time here, welcome. We always say that our spotlight audience is some of the best people on the internet and we love having you here. Make sure if you're watching this on YouTube, you like and subscribe. It's a great way to make sure all our content is coming there right to you, making it easy for you to have that. You can follow us on social media and check out our website. If you've never gone to spotlightenglish.com, there's a lot of resources you can follow along with the script there and there's nice pictures and images and it's just a great way to engage, take your English learning to the next level. Yeah, so Liz, we are going to do something that's a bit of a challenge today, okay? Oh, okay. We are going to talk about a visual thing. Yes. But we're going to use words to do it, which is a challenge. So we're talking about a very famous painter, I believe he was- Impressionist. Primarily a painter, right? Maybe he- Yes, although he did do, I mean, like many artists, right? He experimented with different forms of drawing and painting and things like that. So let's talk about why did we pick this artist to make a spot? Why would this be an interesting spotlight program? So I think, well, Van, let's talk about his name first. Okay. After I say this, I think that Van Gogh, which is the U.S. pronunciation, is a very famous artist throughout the world. So he was from the Netherlands, but he did a lot of his work in France, in Paris, and he has very famous works. There's a lot of him as a self-portrait, so he's got sort of orange hair, and he's turned to the side a little bit. There's a very famous painting called The Starry Night, where there's a sort of- I think it's a tree. It's a tree on the side, what would be on this side if you're looking at the screen, with some swirls in yellow and blue and orange over a city. And then there's another one where he's not in his room, but it's of his room with a bed and a chair, and then another very, very famous Van Gogh painting with a pot of sunflowers. So I think- He did a lot of sunflowers. A what? He did a lot of sunflowers. Yes, yeah, exactly. And so I think that many of those paintings are recognizable, so people can actually think about them, even if they can't see them in an audio program while they're listening. But also, I think that he dealt with a lot of things in his life that many people experience in their own lives, which is mental illness. And so how do you sort of talk about a person with mental illness and their brilliance and things like that? So that is why I think this is an interesting program. But I did want to talk about, especially because we have listeners and viewers who think a lot about how words are pronounced. And we have listeners and viewers from all over the world, and our Dutch viewers are probably saying, oh, you do not say Van Gogh. That is all wrong. And actually, when we were voicing this program, when we were reading the program to be recorded, we had a conversation about this, how we would pronounce Van Gogh, because in the States, we say Van Gogh. We don't say the G-H at the end. But in the UK, the accepted pronunciation is Van Gogh. But neither of those is correct. But our mouths do not really make that sort of sound correctly. So I'm going to give it a try, the correct pronunciation. And it is sort of in the back of your throat when you make that G sound. So you say Van Gogh. So you can see how much trouble I had pronouncing it. I really encourage our Dutch viewers and listeners, let me know how I did. I do have some Dutch heritage, so maybe it's coming through. Van Gogh, Van Gogh. Your enthusiasm is coming through. Exactly. I love thinking about how words are pronounced and pronouncing names correctly. But you will notice, if you listen to this program, that we did say Van Gogh for clarity, for ease, and to make sure we were all saying the same thing. So I am sorry to our Dutch listeners that I just made that word terrible, but we tried. Yes. Okay. We touched on that point, and now we will not argue about it anymore. Yeah. You can say whatever you want. Anyway, so getting back to why we talked about this program about those paintings, have you seen those paintings now? I have. And I wanted to talk about that because there are many, many painters in the world. And as someone who's not an art expert, I love the idea of things changing through time and people changing things. And Van Gogh's, what he's most known for is not a, it's not like he painted like you would take a picture. Like, you know, there are certain painters and they're very skilled and very valuable where it looks so real. Like a photo. It looks like a photo. Like you just took a photo. And it's almost indistinguishable from that, especially if you have some distance and that's really admirable. But Van Gogh was not this kind of painter. He really focused on what he felt about the thing. And so it is the way he used paint and the way he used his brush. It wasn't a one to one. This is real. So I see it in my painting the same way I see it in the world. It was yeah, how the artist saw, right? Yeah, not like maybe with his eyes, but maybe with his senses. Yeah, there was a lot of emotion involved in that. So some of the self-portraits are very like, you could see that the mental health, there was some strain and some stress in these figures of himself that you can't that it's easy in that way. But also, even the starry night seems there's movement to it in a way. Yes, that's what I was just going to say. Yeah, so then that's so hard to, you know, one of the things I like about that is it feels like, well, anybody can paint in that style. And I don't mean like, well, anybody can paint in that style like a little kid. I mean, it's valuable to express yourself even if you can't like, I'm not a great artist. Like, I can't, I can see in my brain what I want it to be like, but if I draw something, it doesn't do that. But if I can just take the energy about how I feel about that thing, I feel like, well, maybe that's a that's an okay entry point to. Yeah, you could produce something. Yeah, yeah. So it's not just about technical proficiency, but about the human experience in some way or my individual way I see things. You brought up a good point about the the self portraits that I thought was really interesting. You know, I described one earlier in this in this program, where he's like kind of looking to the side. And so you see, I'm trying to do I'm trying to do the exact profile here. You see like sort of the side of his face. And I believe he's looking. But what I think is really interesting about that, and if you think about him painting with his feeling and thinking about, you know, all of the struggles that he's experiencing, when you paint a self portrait, you might paint it like this, right, where you see the person straight on and you you're looking at, at all of you. But if you're if you're looking at somebody like this, you don't actually see me full on, right, you just see like part of my face or and things like that. So I think that's really interesting, because he did actually paint. I mean, many of these self portraits, I want to say, in the hundreds, but there are many, I don't know if it's actually 100 or over, but I actually got to visit the Van Gogh Museum in in the Netherlands. And so they have a whole, well, they have many rooms, right, but one room, a whole corner is just self portrait after self portrait after self portrait. And they're all very similar, not only because he looks the same, right. But because he's just trying to get that, that right thing, I don't know, like to see. I think that's really interesting about art as well. Well, and I think, you know, what that art is, you know, for most artists of Van Gogh's level, like, they're working out some of their interior life, right? Like, you don't paint that many self portraits if you just want to make money, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this whole issue of mental health and expression, artistic expression, is very interesting because there's many people who say, well, I'm an artist. So mental health is helpful. Or I, you know, live a wild lifestyle because that's what the artists do. They do drugs or drink alcohol. And then there's other people who say, no, no, no, that doesn't make you a better artist. That is just what maybe a crutch or something that helps you get through your day, but it doesn't actually make you a better artist. And there's a great, there's a great quote in that Van Gogh said, if I could have worked without this terrible disease, what things I might have done, that's part of the program. And I thought, you know, sometimes we think, Oh, these twisted geniuses whose mental disease or mental health drove them to do great things. But that might not be the experience of the person who's actually doing the painting. Yeah. Well, and what I think is really interesting tied to that is that he actually, he committed suicide. He killed himself because of this mental illness. And he couldn't take it anymore. But he died thinking he was a failed painter, like a failed artist. Because his paintings were popular, but they weren't worldwide popular yet. And so, like, how, I don't know, it makes me feel really bad for him, you know, to have this brilliance, but also this pain, this exquisite pain, but not know that he was valued and worthy. Yeah. That's really sad. Well, let us know in the comments below if there's something in your life that you would pursue and you would do regardless, or you feel like you really, it's what's your passion? If it's painting, let us know. You know, we'd love to check out some of your work. If it's something else like music or singing or I don't know, sewing, let us know what that might be. And or maybe you're sitting there and you have had success and maybe you're a famous painter. Let us know that as well. Well, and I also think it's important, Adam, for us to say that if you are having mental health issues and you're thinking about dark things like that, you should really, you can get help and to have hope and to know that things aren't like that forever. Yeah. There are resources in every country in many, many cities. So please find a friend or find a resource in your area so that you don't have to suffer alone. Yeah. It's a great place to end. So make sure that we don't, you know, let's end it here by saying we'd love for you to, you know, like this video, but we would rather maybe take you to, you know, if you know somebody, reach out to somebody who you think might be struggling today and give them a word of encouragement and, you know, just offer that little bit of hope. And of course, that's what we try to do on Facebook, here on YouTube and on our website, spotlightenglish.com. And for Liz and myself, until next time, we hope you listen, watch, practice and learn Spotlight Out.