For my final project I decided to recreate one of the sunflower paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh was a self taught, post impressionist painter who was known for his bold colors and dramatic brushstrokes. Van Gogh created a series of sunflower paintings, some for his friend Paul Gauguin. I decided to base my piece off of the fourth version in the series, "The Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers". This painting was created in 1888 and shows a vase of several sunflowers with a contrasting yellow on yellow background. This painting is shown in the National Gallery, in London. This painting was actually attacked in October of 2022 by environmental activists. These activists threw tomato soup at the painting, but luckily it was protected. I was really drawn to this painting because I am very fond of Van Gogh's work and I believe he is a very inspirational artist. 

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To start this piece, I knew I wanted to create some sort of vase and add sunflowers to the outside. I started by making two simple pinch pots and put them together. I then carved a hole at the top for the opening. Once the pot was shaped to my liking, I started on the sunflowers. I added two sunflowers on either side and created some vines/stems to add more to the piece. I decided to Under glaze this piece and tried to use similar colors to the painting. When I was creating this piece, I unfortunately forgot to score and slip one of the sunflowers on. I was in a rush and didn't realize it was not properly attached. Because of this, the sunflower fell off and broke in the kiln. I also was not able to clear glaze this piece because I ran out of time. If I could do anything differently with this piece, I would just plan ahead earlier and take my time. Overall, if the sunflower didn't explode in the kiln I am pretty proud of this piece and am happy with how the other aspects turned out.