A Giant in the Field

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Another sunflower season has come and gone and this one was amazing. Our neighbor, Farmer Ted, grows about sixty acres of sunflowers for a birdseed crop every year. The sunflower is the official symbol of the state of Kansas. Western Kansas has enormous fields of them. Around here, though, they are not common as a crop. We have painted them for nearly a decade, often quite alone. Over the years, there has been increasing television and social media coverage of Ted’s fields. This year it was estimated around twenty thousand cars showed up over one weekend to see them! This intense public interest closed roads and highway exits near us. Ted’s sunflower fields are exceptionally beautiful because they roll up and over hills lined by trees—looking very much like sunflower fields in Provence, France. We took our oil painting class to paint for a day in a secluded corner. Getting back out again later against the flood of cars took some time.

Recently, when driving across Kansas from teachin…