Phil Chadwick's Art: #2986 "Tangled Singleton Sunflowers"

#2986 "Tangled Singleton Sunflowers"
48 X 36 inches oils on stretched canvas.
Started at 9:30 am Monday, November 10th, 2025

Sunflowers prompt thoughts of Ukraine and Vincent Van Gogh…recent and past tragic tales. Sunflowers are also all about art and science. These are the methods I use to learn more about nature and the paradise we call Earth. Nature holds the answers to the questions we have not even asked yet.

From an artistic perspective, I enjoy painting sunflowers in all of their twisted and tangled glory. Some of these blooms were past prime, while others were just starting to shine. The purple shades on the marble ridge caught my eye, along with the fiery red of some of the leaves. There is indeed purple to be found in nature if one only looks. These sunflowers were unintentionally planted as birdseed the previous winter. Like flowers, birds and nature just keep on giving.

Snow on the Pumpkin, November 9th, 2025

The first snow of the season had arrived the day before. I decided to paint in the Studio in front of the wood stove and listen to tunes while tackling this rather large canvas. This one is for Linda.

The simple sunflower is also the poster child for science. The sunflower solved the mathematics required to efficiently pack its seeds as they are prepared for dispersal and the next generation. The flower even devised the physics to turn and harvest solar energy all day long. They stand tall in the plant world, and there is still much that we can learn from a "simple" flower.

Euclid, the Greek "father of geometry" figured out the magic of the "golden rectangle" way back in 300 BC. The following figures will save a lot of words and still explain the wizardry of the "golden ratio" Φ (pronounced "phi" - my name without the "l"). Golden rectangles are related to squares and smaller golden rectangles. The same golden ratio Φ can be deduced from the Fibonacci sequence, which is also described below.

Sunflowers determined, through Darwin's natural selection, that the most efficient way to pack their seeds together is the "golden angle". Each seed is rotated by about 137.5 degrees from its neighbours so that there is no overlap. The figure to the right details that the golden angle is the smaller angle subtended by portions of a circle's circumference that are in the proportion of the golden ratio, Φ. The seed head of a sunflower is mesmerizing. Nature is simply amazing!

If the golden ratio, Φ, is not enough for you, sunflowers also follow the sun through a process called heliotropism, the diurnal or seasonal motion of plant parts. Differential stem growth controlled by their internal circadian rhythm controls the orientation of the sunflower bloom. During the day, the east side of the stem elongates faster, causing the young flower to bend westward following the sun. At night, the west side of the stem grows more, which causes the head to turn back east, ready to face the sunrise. This tracking behaviour stops once the sunflower reaches maturity. Mature plants generally stay locked in an eastward-facing position. This is because their priority shifts from growth to reproduction, and the eastward position is beneficial for attracting pollinators.

The sunflower is even important in art history. Here again, pictures are worth thousands of words. Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) said: "The sunflower is mine, in a way". I hope that he would have shared the sunflower with me. I almost share my birthday with Vincent except that his was 100 years earlier than mine.

Vincent painted the sunflower series primarily to decorate the "Yellow House" in Arles for his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin. That house was painted by Vincent in 1888 and named "The Yellow House" perhaps by his sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Jo dedicated herself to preserving and organizing Vincent’s paintings. Without her tireless efforts, we might never have known the magnitude of Van Gogh’s genius. Her work established Vincent's legacy, which is synonymous with genius, emotion, and tragedy. Jo made certain that Vincent’s art received the recognition it deserved.

Yellow can also be a tricky colour. Van Gogh used the series as an opportunity to explore and perfect his use of different shades of yellow and how they might be combined to create harmony and contrast. The following images trace some of those studies.

Paul Gaugin even thought of Vincent as "The Painter of Sunflowers" and painted him that way.

For the record, Paul Gauguin was an accomplished and serious student of fencing (with sharp swords, not wooden boards) and may have "accidentally" sliced off Vincent's ear during a heated argument. Perhaps Vincent claimed he razored off his ear to protect his friend from jail. As well, there is a theory that Vincent was "accidentally" shot by two teenagers enamoured with the "wild west-cowboy craze" of the day. Vincent claimed suicide to shield them from punishment. Vincent was clearly an empathetic soul, always concerned for the welfare of others. He was not "mad". It is not crazy to be compassionate or empathetic.

Among other science books, I read the "New Scientist" bi-weekly, an online magazine. Gravitons, quantum mechanics, dark matter and dark energy are frequent topics. I read, but I still don't know what they are. Nor does anyone else really. I wonder if the "Golden Ratio", first discovered by Euclid, might have some clues that have been overlooked. That natural constant impacts shapes from the very small to the very large and might hold some answers.

Not surprisingly, November 23 is Fibonacci Day, an annual holiday that honours one of the most influential mathematicians of the Middle Ages - Leonardo Bonacci. Fibonacci Day is celebrated on November 23rd to honour Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci) and his famous number sequence. The date 11/23 was chosen because the digits 1,1,2,3 are the first four numbers in his sequence.

I hope you are having a "Sunflower Day". There is still so much to learn. This composition may be too long for a blog, but I meant and felt every word.

Finally, a photograph of a painting, regardless of the resolution, just can't touch the original. The colours may be true, but they can only go so far. This would be obvious to anyone who has been nose-to-nose with one of Vincent's works. I used morning light streaming into the Studio to illustrate this fact with respect to #2986 "Tangled Singleton Sunflowers". Oils and light are a living thing and very 3-dimensional.