Dear Lover of Light

If you think of painting as a kind of song, he too canticled the sun.
— Abigail Carroll, “Dear Lover of Light”

In her poem “Dear Lover of Light,” Abigail Carroll writes of Vincent van Gogh as a kind of modern saint, a man who, when he could no longer preach, turned to paint and color as his hymn. In the southern light of Arles, he found his gospel not in words but in the radiance of wheat fields, stars, and sunflowers. Each brushstroke became a prayer, each canvas a psalm of light. Carroll’s line reminds us that creativity itself can be a form of praise, that we too might canticle the sun through the work of our hands and hearts.

Van Gogh and the Night in Arles

In September 1888, while living in Arles, Vincent van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night, a glowing scene of a gas-lit café under a sapphire sky scattered with stars. The work captures his fascination with how color transforms under evening light, and how even the quietest corners of the city could pulse with life after dark. Around the same time, he created The Night Café, an interior view of another tavern where red walls, green lamps, and heavy shadows express the uneasy loneliness that can inhabit such places. Together, these paintings reveal van Gogh’s lifelong search for the spiritual power of color and the emotional music of night.