Paint By Number

My maternal grandmother Annie Jantz Schmidt

My grandmother Annie Schmidt was fond of doing paint by number projects. I can remember being fascinated as a child as I watched her work on them.

After I finished my last puzzle- a timeline of great art pieces, I was looking for something a little different to try that served the same function as a puzzle does for me. I needed something I could work on with my hands, that got my eyes away from screens and was calming and interesting.

My friend Marie told me she had completed a paint by number picture of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. That sounded like what I might be looking for, so I ordered one too. I found filling in the canvas a great stress reliever and an enjoyable project.

With Starry Night at the Museum of Modern Art

I have seen Van Gogh’s Starry Night in the Museum of Modern Art in New York

and I caught a glimpse of it again when we went to the Van Gogh show at the Convention Centre here in a Winnipeg in October where they projected a huge version of Starry Night onto a screen.

My version is quite different but it was a fun project to complete over the last week or so.

We are living in a time when we are confined to our homes a great deal and Van Gogh painted Starry Night during a time when he was confined to the building and grounds of a mental hospital where he was a patient. Painting brought him peace and equilibrium. Doing a paint by number version of his masterpiece brought me moments of peace and equilibrium as well.

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