Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers Part 6 National Gallery UK

Description of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers

The painting is full of color and life. But many art connoisseurs, many critics will conclude that everything is too "on fire" with color. The rich orange and bright yellow colors are a sign of mental illness, as many paintings by this artist show.

There is no clear idea of sunflowers in the picture, everything seems to be jumbled, stuck on and chaotic.

Sometimes the artist admitted that the paintings, or rather what would be depicted in them, is not a figment of his imagination, it’s not reality that surrounds us, but whispers of demons, and to somehow stop these voices in his head, he tried to do whatever they want.

It was as if the sunflowers, snake-headed, were looking at you, drawing you into their own, magical and messy world, and you wanted to correct their position in the vase. Though a vase is not really depicted here, some kind of clay jug. On the one hand it is nauseatingly simple and monotonous, but on the other it is so emotional that this bright yellow color eats away at your consciousness.

The red spot that looks like the core of a sunflower head is very eye-catching. In the whole picture there are no harsh color transitions and here, a rich red. It’s as if reality is breaking out of the monotonous state of things in the artist’s mind.

"Sunflowers" is a kind of "rambling" cycle of paintings depicting sunflowers. In working on these cycles the artist applied the technique of impasto, which carries in itself such a property as applying a thick layer of paint using not only brushes, but also an ordinary knife.

Thus, the surface is rough, as if you can feel all the subtleties of the depicted. The relief of the picture makes it more real.