The Light Arrives

by Beverley Harper Tinsley

Original - Sold

Price

$245

Dimensions

12.000 x 9.000 inches

Title

The Light Arrives

Artist

Beverley Harper Tinsley

Medium

Painting - Watercolor, Ink, Graphite

Description

The Light Arrives
*****
Several sunflowers get lit up, glow and radiate. Sunlight, like truth, shows us so much when it arrives. The moment that provided the inspiration for this painting had a vibrancy so surreal, it was as though I found myself in an alternative, and more vivid, reality.
*****
I see this painting as a sort of celebration of light and dark, and it was not completed without struggle. The sunflowers themselves seemed to emerge from my brush quite naturally. The yellows for once came out crisp, clear, and unpolluted (every painter knows the challenges inherent to yellow), and at that point, the only question was how much detail to provide.
*****
The background features, however, seemed unable to clearly communicate what they wanted to be for quite some time, with the result that the leaves and surrounding areas here, as presented, emerged only after a great deal of thought, consideration, layering and lifting of paint, adjusting of colors, shapes and textural elements. I had to step back often, and to ask myself a lot of questions. I had to listen to the painting.
*****
Finally I had this sparkling, contrasting, somewhat abstract and chaotic balance of light and dark, and I knew I was done. So here is an expressive work of contrast, with a mix of wet fluidity and fine detail, with what is refined, juxtaposed against that which is raw. Contrasting colors of yellow with purple, blue with orange, provide beauty and harmony to the composition, and bring focus and intent to what os otherwise a pretty wild party.
*****
Every now and then, I just have to paint sunflowers. Wild, strong, not subtle, these sturdy golden flowers always make me feel warm and hopeful. A flower of the autumn, or late summer, they are like a long hard laugh before winter and its potential solemnity.
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Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is an annual plant native to the Americas. It possesses a large inflorescence (flowering head), and its name is derived from the flower's shape and image, which is often used to depict the sun. The plant has a rough, hairy stem, broad, coarsely toothed, rough leaves and circular heads of flowers. The heads consist of many individual flowers which mature into seeds, often in the hundreds, on a receptacle base. From the Americas, sunflower seeds were brought to Europe in the 16th century, where, along with sunflower oil, they became a widespread cooking ingredient. Leaves of the sunflower can be used as cattle feed, while the stems contain a fibre which may be used in paper production.
*****
A common misconception is that flowering sunflower heads track the Sun across the sky. Although immature flower buds exhibit this behaviour, the mature flowering heads point in a fixed (and typically easterly) direction throughout the day. This old misconception was disputed in 1597 by the English botanist John Gerard, who grew sunflowers in his famous herbal garden: "[some] have reported it to turn with the Sun, the which I could never observe, although I have endeavored to find out the truth of it." The uniform alignment of sunflower heads in a field might give some people the false impression that the flowers are tracking the sun.
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The uniform alignment results from heliotropism in an earlier development stage, the bud stage, before the appearance of flower heads (anthesis). The buds are heliotropic until the end of the bud stage, and finally face East. Their heliotropic motion is a circadian rhythm, synchronized by the sun, which continues if the sun disappears on cloudy days. If a sunflower plant in the bud stage is rotated 180�, the bud will be turning away from the sun for a few days, as resynchronization by the sun takes time. The heliotropic motion of the bud is performed by the pulvinus, a flexible segment just below the bud, due to reversible changes in turgor pressure, which occurs without growth.

Uploaded

October 31st, 2017

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