Our world is saturated with the images created by Vincent Van Gogh, from his drawings and sketches to his paintings. We can close our eyes and “see” his sunflowers. Or his starry night. The basic details of his life are also bits of information that we seem to inhale as part of our daily existence. Knowledge of those details and his art is reinforced by film after film, immersive art exhibitions, novels, or visiting his namesake museum in Amsterdam.

When I finally was able to carve out time in my life to focus on my own writing, I discovered (to my surprise) that I wanted to write about him. But, also, not exactly about him as a historical figure. Rather, it was a question of looking at the details that we all know about him and wondering: But what kind of person would that be? What would drive him to paint in the way that he did? Did he mean to kill himself, or not? What might it be like to be a regular person of that period encountering him on a day-to-day basis? And what would it be like if I sieved those questions through everything I had absorbed about Van Gogh via films, books, documentaries, historian interviews, and even a much loved “Doctor Who” episode (thank you, Tony Curran; I didn’t realized until after I had completed a couple of drafts that you were part of the “artistic soup” of this process)?

MADAME SOREL’S LODGER was the result of trying to answer those questions, from a creative and not through a historical biographical way. In fact, I initially viewed this as more of a writing exercise, like trying to transcribe a daydream (if that makes sense). I wrote what I thought was going to be a short story while I was on a writing retreat. The next day, when I sat down to write something else, I felt a tug. There is more to this story, it said. I decided to trust it, and chapter after chapter about a man named by everyone as the Artist—Monsieur Artiste—and the people he encountered in the Village of A– showed up to be captured via pixels onto a computer screen.

I discovered an individual driven to pursue what they felt was their calling while also (though he was reluctant to admit it to himself for a very long while) searching for a place that might be called home.

So, happy birthday, Monsieur Van Gogh. You continue to inspire in ways you likely never imagined. Thank you.

 Tracy Wise spent her childhood in Asia due to her father’s aid work. She currently writes university presidential speeches, campus communications, and news stories in California’s Inland Empire. She holds a BA in Theatre and Spanish and an MA in Cultural Studies. A life-long, passionate reader, she designs social media for the Friends of her local Redlands public library in her free time. She’s the author of the novella, Madame Sorel’s Lodger, and the upcoming novel, Manufacturing a Duchess.