The Van Gogh Series :: Sunflowers

I did a guest post over at Gloria's New End Studio blog last Sunday. What a fun idea, and exciting to see myself posted over on a bloggy friend's site! Just in case you missed it click over, or read on below for my continuing Van Gogh series .....

Vincent Van Gogh is an artist who had periods of visionary creativity juxtaposed with times of deep despair. Such a complex story, but then that is what this series is about. Taking certain aspects of his life and using that as creative juices.

You might recall that I mentioned having a bowl of earring 'singles.' I have this bad habit of creating only one earring because I love the creative process, and then I grow tired of duplicating my efforts. As inspiration, I've chosen Van Gogh and his rich use of color to motivate me.

Van Gogh moved to Arles, France in 1888 where he was enchanted by the local landscape and light. His works from this period are deeply influence by intensity of color and light on his subject. Yellow is prominent in his paintings of the wheat field series, haystacks and sunflowers. A letter home from Vincent to his brother Theo noted of painting bunches of sunflowers on multiple panels "the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow." He worked on it from early sunrise to afternoon when he lost the light on the flowers. You can see the richness of color throughout his many paintings during this period. And as a little inspiration I created an Etsy Treasury as a tribute to Van Gogh's sunflower yellows. 

I picked up my unfinished pair of lemon quartz dangle earrings. I love this color, but wanted to add a rich secondary color with them as the quartz can be a little timid. I don't normally mix and match colors like this, but I was going with it from Vincent's influence. I added ruby rondelles to mimic the deep richness of the center of the sunflowers which play off the yellow. That is influence for this pair that you'll find finally posted in my Etsy shop!