#2421 "Sunflowers Turned to the Sun"

Choose to be happy...

I decided to keep the sun on my back and paint looking up into the head of the giant sunflower plant that towered above the Singleton Garden. It was only 10 am and an earlier start to painting than the past couple of days. The sunflowers were still tracking the early morning sun. Sunflowers turn their faces toward the sun as they follow it across the sky. This ability is known as heliotropism or solar tracking. Special motor cells at the bases of the flower buds shrink or enlarge as they absorb water, which moves their faces toward the sun. This is the same way that many other flowers track the sun. 

I read another explanation for this solar tracking that sounded a bit different. This explanation is based on unequal growth during the day. The side of the stem facing away from the Sun grows more than it does on its side facing the Sun. This uneven growth causes the stem to bend toward its shorter side, the side facing the Sun. They benefit by receiving more solar energy to perform photosynthesis. Sunflowers that turned toward the sun will grow faster and produce more offspring than those that do not.

The folklore of many cultures regarding sunflowers is interesting and magical. Sunflowers are often associated with truth, honesty, and loyalty. The story is also told that if you're having doubts about something, all you have to do is grab a sunflower from the field right at sunset and place it under your pillow. When you wake up in the morning, everything you have to do will be clear. 

Life takes many turns, just like sunflowers turn themselves to follow the light of the sun, fulfilling their natural magic. Sadly it is clear that we don't have a natural instinct towards such positivity written in our DNA. We need to be more like the sunflowers that naturally gravitate towards new opportunities, changes that helps them grow, initiatives that will make the sunflowers improve and cewrtainly look happier. 

The particular features and character of the rustic sunflower that Van Gogh to paint it. "It's the vibrant color that he liked, but it's also the form," Nienke Bakker, curator of a new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum said. "The sunflower is a very strong and sturdy plant. It's not elegant and refined. The rustic sunflower has the roughness and unpolishedness of the real countryside and that is what Vincent felt strongly about." The sunflower, which Van Gogh once saw as decorative, became something almost sacred to him. The sunflower was a symbol that represented light itself, an ideal of an honest life lived in nature. His paintings, he wrote to his sister in 1890, were "almost a cry of anguish while symbolizing gratitude in the rustic sunflower." The sunflower brought Vincent comfort and familiarity and a certain glow and form that could raise his spirits in troubled times. As a result, Vincent took the sunflower as his own personal artistic signature, telling his brother Theo in another letter in 1889 that "the sunflower is mine." 

"The sunflower is mine, in a way." Vincent Van Gogh 

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