Everyone knows who Vincent van Gogh is, right?  But did you know that there is a series of Big Easel paintings based on Vincent van Gogh's Sunflower Paintings?  

"Each sculpture consists of a colossal hand-painted reproduction of one of the seven Sunflower Paintings, measuring an impressive 7 x 10 metres, which rests on a 25 metre,17,000 kilogram steel easel. The first Easel was erected in Altona, Manitoba, Canada on October 17, 1998. The second was finished and erected on November 8, 1999 in Emerald, Australia. The third easel was successfully proposed to the city of Goodland and the State of Kansas, USA. Construction began in the spring of 2000."  http://www.bigeasel.com/web/vangoghproject.html

The Van Gogh project hopes to reproduce all seven sunflower paintings by van Gogh in seven different countries.  If you're a van Gogh admirer like I am, or just want to view some spectacular art, this is a great site!

- chameleon 

That is so cool! I see a small road trip to Goodland, Kansas in my spring agenda!

I went to the site you provided and clicked a link to view his sunflower paintings. I was thinking that he must have been in a...well, less moody state of mind to paint sunflowers. They all look so pleasant.

Then I got to the last painting, the one with the dark background. I just can't stop laughing! I have never seen such a SAD painting of sunflowers; they all look depressed. LOL, Sorry, but I wasn't expecting that.  

Oh, that's great, Mary!  I think a trip to Altona, Manitoba (Canada) is definitely going to be in my plans. The remarkable painting you referred to is van Gogh's "Still Life: Vase with Five Sunflowers" and unfortunately, was destroyed by fire in the Second World War.  He envisioned his sunflower works as a series and worked diligently on them in anticipation of the arrival in Arles of his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin. It is an oil on canvas painting made in August of 1888. 

- chameleon

 Thanks so much for sharing all this with us!  The visuals are really helpful.  IF you're interested, Dover (like the Dover that's so often in the Muse Calmics ClipArt and Download) has coloring books of "the greats" -- they've made black-lines of famous paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, etc., so you can interpret them yourself.  It's quite fun -- lends itself to Paint programs.  So you could, say, take the photo that makes you sad and paisley it up!

Hi Constance,

I checked out Dover and it had so many great dowloads that I felt I could use so I signed up for their free weekly downloads.  Thanks alot for the suggestion, Contstance!  By the way, I also downloaded the free version of Art Rage so that I could learn some new and exciting techniques and plan to 'paisley' something up in the near future. 

~ chameleon

I really do love Van Gogh's "Still Life: Vase with Five Sunflowers" (while it looks so sad) and it is a shame that the work was destroyed during WWII. So many masterpieces have ended up lost or damaged due to war.

I just purchased Art Rage and I was surprised at how easy it is to use, yet capable of so much! Thanks Constance for highlighting this in your Gallery.

Peace -Mary