Wild Sunflowers

The painting pictured above is very inspirational to myself and connects very closely to my own interests and personal taste in artistic technique. I love the concept of taking a simple image or symbol and distorting it - adding more meaning to the piece and potentially giving viewers more to think about when viewing the piece itself. Particularly in this piece, the color usage is very modern, yet in an almost clashing traditional vs. non-traditional way. For example, traditional colors are used in the flowers (the pedals of the sunflower are yellow, the stem is green, the center is brown, etc) - yet, the technique and overlapping of the paint drips is very non-traditional and modernistic. The paint drips add a lot of character to the painting. It appears almost as if the flowers are melting, or as if the colors from the flowers are dripping off - like ice cream melting in the sun. The color usage is very rainbow like, yet the choice of color usage appears to be very well though out. The abstraction of the piece is what really draws me in, and I love that the artist chose to challenge traditional art  by taking something old and making it new (in other words, taking a traditional painting of flowers and making it more modernistic). Yet what is the purpose of the technique? When we think of flowers, we think of happiness, and beauty. The flowers are almost a reminder that all good things can turn bad. A quote that I feel almost connects to this piece, as Confucius once said, "All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get." In other words, even good people can be easily influenced by negative things and slowly fall apart - and this piece reminds me of that concept. This is also very inspiring to me, because the concept and techniques are similar to my personal techniques that I gravitate towards using in my own work. 
 

Image derived from:
Angliker, Chrissy. Wild Sunflowers. 2012. Painting. Chrissy AnglikerWeb. 5 Sep 2013. <http://www.chrissy.ch/Solo2012/Wild_Sunflowers_web.jpg>.


Quote derived from:
"9 Powerful Life Lessons from Confucius." Pick the Brain. (2010): n. page. Web. 5 Sep. 2013. <http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/author/mrselfdevelopment/>.