In a letter dated October 22nd, 1882, Vincent Van Gogh said to his brother Theo, “the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, but is a succession of little things that are brought together.” And maybe we each know this intuitively, that what we achieve is always an amalgam of ideas, efforts, mistakes, and do-overs: little things all threaded together, forming something that if not yet great, is at least approaching greatness. A painting is a collection of all the …