amandacore  ᥫ᭡

– James Baldwin

The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. Every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from all across the world to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be a part of the production.

︎My forever favorites

The theme of self-imprisonment was one Gertrude Abercrombie treated a number of times. In this painting, a figure, her back to the viewer, is facing the barred door of the single intact wall of a three-sided structure, a prison of her own making, a powerful statement of how one's internal deficiencies can limit external actions. The artist, who said, "It is always myself that I paint," depicts herself as trapped by her own inability to act. Abercrombie was charismatic, witty, and popular, and also deeply insecure, self-doubting, and unable to feel real connection, a dichotomy beautifully expressed in Self-Imprisonment. Along with another recurrent theme, which she termed "snared" or "snagged," in which she is attached by the long train of her dress, a blindfold, or her long hair to a wall or a door, she poignantly conveys the self-imposed dimension of her lack of freedom. It is important to note that, although the self-imprisonment theme always contains some of these same major elements, each of the paintings is unique and meaningful in its own way.

– Dr. Susan Weininger, professor emerita of art history at Roosevelt University