Sarah Osborne Bender

Cataloguing and Technical Services Librarian Do you have a personal motto? Solvitur ambulando (It is solved by walking.) What Phillips Collection work is special to you and why? The Road Menders, 1889 by Vincent van Gogh. My husband and I visited Saint-Rémy-de-Provence early one November. I had fallen in love with the plane trees we had been seeing all over the region, taking many photos of them. The town of Saint-Rémy was filled with dappled sunlight filtering down through the lacey canopy of the plane tree’s large yellow leaves. One morning, entering the center of town on the Boulevard Marceau, we were stunned by a dramatic change- the trees had been pruned for winter. Now they were cropped, with twisted branches ending suddenly at knobby joints thrusting into an open blue sky. The town was evenly filled with winter light, like the parasol over the Boulevard had been put away for the season. This painting brings me back to that experience every time. What’s your favorite spot in the city? The dance floor at Back Alley, circa 1994.