Growing up, I remember a vase of Van Gogh’s sunflowers hanging in our house, an image which is permanently imprinted in my subconscious mind. So I evoked the spirit of that Van Gogh painting today while painting my own version of a Sunflower. Maybe that’s something I should try more often since I had a great day.
Day 22. “Sunflower” by Beverly Shipko, Oil painting on cradled panel, 6 x 6 inches
I distinctly remember where I took the photo for this painting. Laura, Bonnie, Jay and I had just come back from Paris, where we all met to celebrate Bonnie’s Marist College graduation – our first family vacation together in many years. When I asked the kids (they aren’t really kids any more, are they?) to check out Paris sites and tell me where they wanted to do, they both said the same thing – Monet’s Home and Studio at Giverny, an hour by train outside of Paris.
This was a wonderful surprise since I am a Monet worshipper, and I was expecting them to say something more showy like Versailles. Maybe that book I gave them as a kid, Linnea in Monet’s Garden, made a bigger impact on them than I thought!
You’re probably thinking that I am going to say the photo came from Giverny – well, it didn’t. Instead, it was taken at an major show Jay and I went to after we returned from Paris called Monet’s Garden at the New York Botannical Gardens (NYBG) . This exhibit reinterpreted Giverny, right down to the turquoise Japanese wisteria bridge and the water lilies. It was a terrific tribute to Monet and his avid passion for gardening (for lack of a better word at 1am), which ultimately inspired some of his most famous paintings – the water lilies.
Apparently, between Van Gogh and Monet, I was truly inspired. I was in the zone. Time flew by and this painting just worked. I didn’t want to come out of the zone – and wouldn’t have except that I was expecting 10 friends for a 7pm meeting at my house tonight. So I had to take a break around 6pm, when this photo was taken. As you can see, I had already simplified the background by taking out the greenery.
At 10pm, I eagerly came back to the painting, finished around midnight – and had a lot of fun doing it. I think one of the reasons that this painting came easier was that I took some time upfront to refine the sketch, so I had a clear sense of the textured of the “face” and how the leaves overlapped. Today was a heavy Q-tip day since I often used them as brush replacements to keep the colors pure, and just threw them out afterwards (saved a lot of time cleaning brushes).
While this will be my last flower painting of the challenge, flowers will be a subject that I will revisit – and I am not just talking about the sugar ones on cakes!
See you tomorrow.
