I love sunflowers. They look so hopeful. I love the way they follow the sun. It wasn’t until I moved to Israel that I saw sunflowers grown in fields. I didn’t know that people actually ate the seeds either (the cockatoo maybe but…). Here they are a ubiquitous snack mostly sold roasted and salted. The idea is to crack the seed with your teeth, maneuver the centre out with your tongue and teeth in tandem and spit out the shell. No surprise that they are colloquially called “Spitz”. If a bunch of Israeli men have been sitting chatting in the park you can be sure to find a mound of masticated sunflower seed shells after they have gone.
During my daily commute to work I used to pass a couple of sunflower fields. This was the time of the old road where it was bumper to bumper traffic, so plenty of time to gaze at and gauge the growth of the agriculture along the way. Now the highway is built high above the fields and I can whizz by at 120 kph seeing nothing, but getting there a lot faster. I loved watching the sunflowers ripen – the plants would suddenly develop heads and begin to grow tall. Eventually there was a field of green bowed heads and there would always be one, just one, eager beaver plant with his single yellow face up and shining in the field of green. It always made me smile to see it. By the next day the whole field would be a burst of color. The field would be enjoyed for a week or so, but all too soon the heads would begin to droop. The plants would be sprayed with herbicide, turning a dull brown and looking like tattered, dispirited tramps before being harvested. The stalks would be plowed under until next year’s show.
I read up on them and I see that sunflower seeds have all kinds of health benefits. I will have to acquire the Spitz habit. In the meantime anything you ever wanted to know about sunflowers is on Wikipedia here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helianthus
I had inspiration to start painting sunflowers. I was at a craft fair in our village and one of my neighbors was selling paintings. One immediately caught my eye – a beautiful 380 x 580 mm acrylic on composite board, gold and green composition of 3 sunflowers. I bought it right away, then my neighbor explained that she was a friend of the artist Bracha Fishel. She explained that Bracha was a quadriplegic who painted with her mouth! The following is a link to Bracha’s website. You can see her gallery of beautiful paintings. Be sure to watch the video to see her amazing dog. I can barely get my dogs to sit – hers does laundry (not kidding!) and can even feed her. Bracha is Swiss and Israeli and she is quite renowned. When you see her pictures you can see why.
The picture hanging on my wall which inspired me to paint sunflowers is
I remember saying to my son when I got the painting home that it was not a picture of sunflowers so much as a picture of the “idea” of sunflowers, their essence if you will.
Of course I soon wanted to see if I could do the same thing. This is my first go at sunflowers – borrowed very heavily from Bracha’s:
The granddaddy of sunflowers is of course Vincent van Gogh. He painted many versions of sunflowers, all worth squillions now (sad that he was so penniless). The details of his sunflower phase can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflowers_(Van_Gogh_series)
I chose to copy the London Version which is supposedly hanging in the National Gallery in London. I hope to see it in person one day. Meantime my copy is shown with Vincent’s below, can you tell which one is mine :). It is like one of those spot the differences cartoons. I realized later that I had chosen a canvas that was not in the same proportion as the original (as it appeared on my printer) so all my stems are longer and skinnier and my flowers seem malnourished as well. In this view the color seems to be too dark on my version, however, it could be a trick of the light and the quality of photography (on my phone). I do recall that by the time I finished this I was heartily sick of my yellow palette.
