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Sunday, July 08, 2007

Fields of plenty

It was almost a year ago that I fell in love with Sunflowers. After a lifetime of living with paintings of Sunflowers, not quite as ubiquitous as magnolias, I finally GOT IT. My parent's bedroom featured a series of Van Gogh reproductions from his sunflower series. They were curious images but I never gave them much consideration as a child. I was more interested in the blue boy and pinkie hanging in the living room.

Fields and fields of sunflowers in all stages of bloom. It was August and in southwest France sunflowers are harvested for their seed. They are left in the field to dry much like cotton. Their figurative stance, posture and expressiveness hit me like a wall. Finally I really understood why Kiefer uses sunflowers in his latest work (beyond their references to art history and allegory)! He lives in France now on a vast compound surrounded by countryside. I fell in love with the sunflower, absconded with one or two from the local fields, scanned the sunflower, drew them, painted them, wrote about them. This summer I tried cultivating them.

I come from a long line of agrairians but did not inherit my ancestor's green thumb. I did inherit their persistence and I do spend a great deal of time in the garden. Unfortunatly I am a trial and error gardener and what thrives in my neighbors' gardens doesn't always thrive in mine. I haven't resorted to purchasing plastic sunflowers yet but with a pending drout it could happen. Sigh.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

my favorite flower to draw as a child used to be the sunflower.
so big, so yellow...
fo

7/09/2007 3:08 AM  
Blogger Walker said...

When I see sunflowers I think of hpney bees because I knew somneone who grew then and had hives next to them.
They are big and beautiful and stand like sentinals always looking.

I hope you get lots of cool rain soon.

Have a nice day.

7/09/2007 3:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I always drew what were either suns or spiders - depending on who was looking at them. Somethings never change...

Walker, Sentinals are the perfect way to describe what I love about Sunflowers! We could actually use both the bees and the cool rain. Please cross your fingers for us.

7/09/2007 10:11 PM  

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