Warmth And Hope

by Beverley Harper Tinsley

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Price

$375

Dimensions

12.000 x 16.000 inches

Title

Warmth And Hope

Artist

Beverley Harper Tinsley

Medium

Painting - Watercolor And Graphite

Description

Warmth And Hope
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. In this semi abstract composition, light streams in with shades of rust and blue flooding around the turquoise vase, which is a barely a container for the flower's exuberance and freedom. Although the flower has dropped a few petals, there is plenty of life left in it.
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I consider this painting to be an expressive, raw composition, with white paper left untouched, and pencil lines showing, intentional watercolor blooms, brushstrokes, drips and splatters galore. Painting should be fun, and making this painting certainly was.
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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.
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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.
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Uploaded

February 24th, 2017

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