Work in Progress #7: What I Learned from Vincent Van Gogh and ECCC

A couple of weekends ago, my wife surprised me with tickets to Emerald City Comic Con.

I should tell the whole story. It was my turn to plan our Friday date night and I got us tickets for the Van Gogh Experience in Seattle. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an immersive exhibit featuring some of Van Gogh’s most famous works, some of them interpreted in 3D. Some are presented as sculpture, optical illusions, and some of the rooms he painted were rebuilt in his art style. It places you in the art. Peppered throughout the exhibit are facts about the artist, his art style, and his overall life. It had been highly recommended to me by people whose opinion I respect (spoiler alert: believe the hype, it’s awesome and I recommend it too) and I thought it might make for a great evening. And just after I bought the tickets and was about to inform my wife of the plan, I got a text message from her.

Wifey: Any Saturday plans?

Me: No, why?

Wifey: Wanna go to ECCC?

Me: I’m down!

And that was how our weekend got filled up.

The Van Gogh Experience was a fascinating tour of the artist, the man, and the work. The distinction between artist and man is intentional; as an artist he was a genius, but as a man he was tortured. Some of the facts on display about the man as an artist were unbelievable. For instance, I didn’t know he had a brother. Also, I didn’t realize he died so young, even by the standards of the time. And most amazingly, the majority of his most famed work, he painted and sketched in the last ten years of his life, including one he did just days before he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That’s the artist. The man was a living portrait of suffering. He reportedly dealt with a variety of brain and mental illnesses (currently thought to be a combination of bipolar disorder and a form of epilepsy) that reportedly made him mercurial and misunderstood. His singular obsession with his art seemed like a coping mechanism. The legendary loss of his ear was something that happened in a bout of acute depression, for instance. He also liked to drink, and that did him no favors. Now, all this information is readily available in a Google search, but using this information as context for the art and making the art a fully immersive, sensory, three-dimensional (and virtual reality in some cases) installation gives you a peek—at the very least—into the mind of a brilliantly creative man. It’s the kind of thing that made me wonder what a man with his combination of talent and mental illness would have been now, almost 200 years later.

The next day we went to ECCC, the first time I’d ever been to a convention of that size. There was a level of nerd on display that was astounding, and I was there for it. I came across several independent creators, writers and artists of color in particular, all of whom were enthusiastic about their work, almost to obsession. I bought stuff from a couple of vendors based solely on their enthusiasm for their art. My wife bought more stuff than I did, but that’s a story for a different day. Anyway, after stopping at the booth for Stranger Comics—which prominently featured Black fantasy characters in a majority Black fantasy world—I was invited to the talk hosted by Stranger Comics head honcho, Sebastian Jones. He talked about the genesis of his idea and the obsession it created in him, and the validation he got from seeing his work touched so many people, enough that people are cosplaying as characters he created.

So, what did I learn? For starters, I had been concerned that I was losing it a little with how much I’ve become increasingly obsessed with writing and making a career out of telling stories. Turns out, I’m not even close: Van Gogh, Seb Jones, and every artist, cosplayer, and creative I came across that weekend were way more obsessed about stuff than I am. I also learned that the obsession is necessary. It has to be powerful enough that you can not only convince other people to buy in, starting with yourself. After all, you can’t sell it if you don’t buy it.

And starting now, I’m buying in. I’ll tell anyone who will listen that I’m a writer, and I’ll tell anyone who asks what I’m working on.

I would be remiss in not shouting out some of the other amazing artists, writers, and vendors who showcased themselves at ECCC. So, here’s some pay-it-forward promotion for these people that either I or my wife visited: Jason Bond, who held an informative panel on writing fight scenes; Matthew Wolf, creator of The Ronin Saga; pinup artist Jeff Egli; the talented brothers at Astravision Studios; independent artists Lisa LaRose, Echo Chernik, Brittany Otto, Sienna Cenere, Kelly McKernan; the folks at Omni Gaming; the people at Nerdwood Designs; Pen maker Ken Krebs; and the awesome minds behind Pixel That Funderwear.

Thank you all for what you do.