This joyful burst of color ruled my days while I painted and painted until the work came to life on the canvas. I love my sunflowers and grow many in my gardens.

The goldfinches love them too and come to feast on the seeds every year, dodging the neighborhood cats in the process. Birds smartly dressed in gold and black hang upside down from the drooping flower heads heavy with seed. I smile at their efforts.

Painting yellows is an exercise in alternate shadows. Sunflowers require shadows in browns and golds to glow with sunshine. Mix the wrong colors and the painting will drop dead in its tracks.

But those lovely butterscotch colors glowing with red oranges, now there is a palette that tells the story of summer sunshine, summer heat, summer light bathing the gardens.

A wealth of golden light dances through the late summer garden, one glorious blast of delight before fall comes and swiftly claims the garden in a different palette. Swiftly here high in the Rocky Mountains, that is.

The mornings have a distinct chill now, even in August when the thermometer rises into the eighties daily. A new scent is on the breeze, we know fall is barely hidden around the next corner.

But the sunflowers blaze with their awareness of the sun, reminding us to be awake to this moment, to this splendid torrent of grace.

Summer Awakening is 48″ wide by 36″ high with painted gallery wrap edges and can be either hung without framing or with framing. The painting is available at RiverStone Gallery.

This article appears in the following carnivals:
Happiness Carnival
Garden Fest Carnival

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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