#2785 "June Sunflowers"

#2785 "June Sunflowers"
16x20 inch gallery mounted (1.5 inch profile) canvas

I quite enjoy painting sunflowers. They are happy flowers with a wonderful message. I wanted to turn what looked like a portrait painting into a landscape format. There was some artistic sleight of hand required in the composition but not too much. 

I used a lot of paint. Yellow is an especially weak colour and I used two palettes to keep my colours clean. There was no preliminary drawing and I just charged at the canvas letting the oils flow and hoping that something good might result. The music was on loud. I wanted this painting to be bold and different. 

The Air Quality was bad due to the extensive fires in the Boreal forest. People were advised to stay inside - and that included artists. The weather and the associated impacts were all a result of climate change. I painted within the Singleton Studio in order to avoid the smoke and still be creative. 

             A trilogy of sunflowers from COVID 2021                             

These sunflowers came from a florist in celebration of birthdays and a party held within the Singleton Sanctuary. I thought that the flowers were so beautiful after the festivities that they needed to be recorded for posterity in oils. A similar story happened in 2021 when I painted #2565 "Past Prime Sunflower Bouquet", #2566 "Sunflower Bouquet Last Daze" and #2567 "Wilted Sunflowers". 

I painted four works based on this particular 2023 group of sunflowers: 

#2785 "June Sunflowers"; 
#2786 "Wilted Sunflower"; 
#2787 "Sunflowers Still Shining" and 
#2788 "Sunflowers Last Day". 

A Quartet of Sunflowers from June 2023
The planned Trilogy became a Quartet

An article from 2020 in a local newspaper before it folded.

One of several paintings from those 2020 blooms. 

There are many more sunflowers painted but these were completed in a series of particular blooms with a story behind them as they dried out to become compost to nourish more flowers in the future. I have had a lifetime of affection for sunflowers. Like daisies, I look forward to painting them every year. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go right to the Flowers Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick