Today Koen and I went to the Van Gogh exhibition in Mons. The theme was The Birth of an Artist and it was about the time Van Gogh spent in the Belgian mining region Borinage where he was preaching to the miners but also sharing their life, a time during which he was transformed into an artist. Like a butterfly. So the exhibition was something like the view from inside the puppa. Quite dark, that is. A lot of miners, a lot of coal, of misery, sweat and hard work was all there was to see at the exhibition, with a few exceptions of the latter work of Van Gogh. Amazing to think that the artist of the most exploding colours was "born" in the greyest of regions.