15 SUNFLOWERS IN A VASE and PORTRAIT OF ARTIST'S MOTHER

Our yesterday was spent flinging a squeaky toy for the little monkey to retrieve.  Never in my life have I seen such energy.  One thing for sure, she's having lotsa fun.  As are we.

Things here are peaceful, as we like it.  Nothing earth-shaking happening.  The boyfriend went grocery shopping yesterday, taking advantage of sales.  Stores are trying gimmicks galore.  Pork butts were listed on sale for 99 cents a pound, but they could only be ordered online.  That's no big deal for us, but not everyone shops online.  Which brings me to the thought of "pork butts" which come from the shoulder part of a pig.  The boyfriend has an electric meat grinder, and he grinds the pork butt so we have ground pork for casseroles and pork burgers.  He's a meat cutter to the core.

Van Gogh made 11 paintings with sunflowers the primary subject.  They had a special significance for him.  He wrote that sunflowers communicate gratitude.

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers - 1888
with Vincent's signature on front of vase

In this painting Vincent uses a golden palette.  Yellow, for him, was a symbol of happiness, perhaps a metaphor for the sun.  In their various stages of decay, these flowers also remind us of the cycle of life and death.  Isn't it amazing how this man was able to turn his sorrow into beauty? 

Vincent Van Gogh's father, Theodorus, was a minister.  His mother was from a wealthy family.  She was a housewife and mother of six children.  She was artistically inclined, 'filling notebooks with drawings of plants and flowers.'  One of Vincent's earliest drawings are copies of his mother's sketches of a bouquet of flowers and thistles.  Did she paint the flowers as symbols of life's good times?  the thistles the painful times?  Or, was she simply the kind of person who saw beauty in all the natural world?

Portrait of Artists Mother - 1888

In Vincent's letters, he described his childhood as cold and his relationship with his mother, tense.  He felt rejected by his mother, because he could never measure up to her ideal expectations.   This portrait was painted from a black-and-white photograph.  Vincent wrote to his brother Theo:  'I cannot stand the colorless photograph, and I am trying to do one in a harmony of color, as I see her in my memory.'  🖌