This painting was created in 2018. With the end of the sketching class this year, my sketching journey stopped at a few simple drawings for Miss Hui. Of course, my oil painting skills have also improved a lot in the past year or so, and I have carefully explored my own way of speaking.
This year, several landscape paintings were created while sketching in the countryside of Shilin County. This period of sketching was a breakthrough and a period of qualitative change in my painting. The coordination between the scene and the canvas, the combination of humanity and light and color, and the indescribable life. In short, it has planted a lot in my life.
Overall Size: /
Size without the frame: 30 x 40 cm
Country: China
Date: 2018
Materials: Oil paint on linen
Condition: well preserved
Creative themes and style | My works revolve around the creative concept of "The land of humanity, People on the land". The people in the painting are people in nature, and the lines, shapes, and colors are close to nature. The nature in the painting is nature in the eyes of humans, existing in interaction with humans.I don’t pursue a series of works with a fixed and continuous style. I hope that the style of the pictures will synchronize with the changes in my life and always remain oscillating. The performance of the work must be in sync with the development of one's own life in order to be Sincere and powerful. Ideas are later.
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Ten Sunflowers freezes the vivid moment of the symbiosis between plants and the environment with passionate and simple brushstrokes. In terms of form, the sunflowers and branches and leaves do not follow the path of precise realism. They outline the shapes with general brushstrokes. The spreading of petals and the curling of leaves carry the capture of life tension in Vincent van Gogh’s sunflower series. However, they add more randomness of natural growth, condensing the vigorous vitality in the countryside into intuitive visual symbols.
The composition breaks the regularity of conventional flower paintings. The plant branches and leaves extend to all directions of the picture, as if breaking free from the frame constraints, creating a dynamic sense of “de - centralization” similar to that in Paul Cézanne’s still lifes. It makes the viewer’s gaze wander with the branches and leaves, feeling the disorder and freedom of natural growth. The interspersing of color blocks of the background building anchors this freedom to the real coordinate, constructing a unique field of “nature - humanity” integration.
Color is an expressive highlight. The bright yellow flowers, emerald green leaves, and reddish - brown walls collide with high - saturation tones, similar to the pursuit of color purity in Henri Matisse’s paper - cutting art. Abandoning implicit transitions, it uses direct color dialogue to convey the passion and vividness under the sun’s scorching. The mutual contrast between colors makes the brightness of sunflowers more dazzling, becoming the highlight of the picture’s emotions.
The brushwork is bold and expressive. Thick applications stack the thickness of petals and the texture of leaves, and quick sweeps outline the hardness of branches. Just like the release of brushstroke power in Maurice de Vlaminck’s Fauvist paintings, it injects the creator’s subjective feelings about nature into each flower and leaf through brush marks, making the static picture surge with the rhythm of life.
In terms of content and theme, through “ten sunflowers”, it pays tribute to the true posture of natural life—beside the building and between heaven and earth, they grow freely, regardless of regularity. The emotional expression is passionate and direct. With color collisions and bold brushstrokes, it tells of the obsession with the wild beauty of nature, evoking the viewer’s resonance with rural vitality and life power deep in the heart. It is a visual ode dedicated to nature and life.
Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers series, praising life tension with intense colors;
Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples in a Basket, expressing real order with “de - centralization” composition;
Henri Matisse’s Harmony in Red, creating emotional sparks with pure color collisions.
They can explore the passionate chapters of the integration of nature and art together with Ten Sunflowers.
A1: In the composition, about ten sunflower heads can be counted. They are not in their prime bloom but show signs of wilting, drooping, and even decay. Here, the number “ten” is not merely a count; it symbolizes a cycle of life—a collective stage, a sense of completion.
A2: The painting intertwines yellows and browns: some petals still glow with golden brightness, while others have withered into the dark, earthy background. Even the green leaves bear traces of decay and fragmentation, evoking a sense of “lingering decline.” The earthy tones of the ground, contrasted with distant mountains and a blue sky, create a tension between warm and cool hues, deepening the somber mood. Within this palette, the fiery red earth and the sunflower’s yellow seem to fight against the fading season.
A3: It is the idea of “glory at dusk.” These ten sunflowers have passed their peak, yet they remain upright, their heads still turned outward, as if burning fiercely in their final moments. The painting carries a Van Gogh-like pathos and passion, yet is grounded in a quieter, more natural authenticity.
A4: Yes. If Loss and Discolored reflect the collapse and emptiness of individual emotion, then Ten Sunflowers represents a collective destiny: no longer vibrant, yet still persisting in decline. It expresses an outward, cyclical sense of fate rooted in nature’s rhythms.
A5: Unlike an inner monologue of sorrow, it feels more like an objective contemplation of time. The ten sunflowers resemble the closing movement of a musical piece—imperfect yet resonant, with vigorous brushwork and thick, tactile pigment. This “truth of fading” gives it a gravity that makes it deeply worthy of collection.
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