Italian White (Sunflower)

Colored pencils on paper

19.5x12.5cm | 8×5 in

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Sunflowers are often associated with the image of radiant yellow blooms under the bright summer sunlight. However, this variety "Italian White", native to North America, produces whitish petals tinged with pale yellow, gently challenging our familiar image of sunflowers.

 

​The name "sunflower" derives from the plant's habit of "following the sun" due to growth hormones,  eventually forming the word "sunflower".

 

"Italian White", a variety developed for gardening, was named for its chic and modern color and appearance.

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This artwork began in the summer of 2014, when a woman I met through a mutual friend asked me to create a colored pencil drawing of her favorite flower, which blooms in her garden. That summer, when I visited her garden to study the subject, I met her grandchildren, who had come home for the summer holidays.

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The lively children were running through the garden, carrying insect cages in their hands. On the wooden tables on the terrace behind the flowers, I included the insect cages that the children had been using.

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Rather than simply depicting the flower I was asked to draw, I intended this drawing to be a record of a cherished memory of that summer, when her young grandchildren came home for the holidays.
 
The language of flowes of "Italian White" conveys the message, "I will always be thinking of you".

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If, years or even decades later, her grandchildren could recall with nostalgia the summer holidays they spent in their grandmother's garden, remembering their childhood and her love for them, I would be deeply pleased as the artist.