I Am Seeking I Am Striving

Sourced to The Letters of Vincent van Gogh edited by Mark Roskill (1997), this compact declaration appears in correspondence from the early 1880s when van Gogh was teaching himself to draw and paint from scratch. Having abandoned a career in art dealing and then in ministry, he threw himself into art with total commitment, and the phrase reads almost as a personal creed — a vow made in the act of writing.