Day 23 of the 100 day project was a sunflower kind of day for me.  I remember the foggy day in San Francisco in April 2015 when I decided I’d try to channel the sun for a burst of energy and clarity by drawing sunflowers.

I didn’t have a live sunflower to draw from, but I did have a book of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh that included his Two Cut Sunflowers from 1887. His painting is in color but I decided to try drawing the flowers using pencil on paper. 

This drawing took intense concentration to make and I felt like I entered into a meditative like state where time and boundaries gently disappeared – kind of like the feeling of being in the thick fog which was just outside the door of the studio. I was imagining Van Gogh’s own hand drawing these sunflowers and felt amazed imagining my own hand making some of the same movements and marks as his. And for a brief moment, I felt the reverence he must have had for these flowers to draw them with such tenderness. And then, I felt an immense rush of reverence - reverence for the gifts Van Gogh left us – not just his paintings but his love of the world that he observed and drew, not too much unlike the world that is just outside our doors too. 

I think one of the reasons his work is so beloved today is that he captured something beyond the representational subjects he drew....he captured his love of the subjects of his works. So this drawing was not only reverence for those who blazed trails before us, but reverence for the love they left us in the process of making something from their hearts for us and many more still to come to revere as much as we do.