Hope - available for shipping Dec ‘25

I call this one "Hope!" 

While I was busy with this painting the word was in my mind the whole time! I think it was "triggered" by my conversation with a school principal the week before I started painting these wild sunflowers. Something she said stuck with me. "Kids today don't have hope anymore," she said, adding, "I think it's because their parents do not have any hope either.”

Yesterday I read what Google's Al spits out about sunflowers. Apparently sunflowers are Ukraine's national flower, and for them it represents hope.

I read this with the hope that they (the people in Ukraine) still have hope after everything.

I'm painting these sunflowers hoping that you still have hope... or that you'll find hope somewhere...

The candle is in a pot that I made from clay I dug up in my garden. I picked the wild sunflowers in the field next to the Vanderbijl-Potch road. Sometimes the elements of hope are right there before our eyes, but we are blinded by the hopelessness that is covering our hearts. 

The shadows in the painting may seem unnatural for a light source coming from the bottom. This still life was set up in my shadow box, so the main source of light is actually from above. That is absolutely fitting for a painting titled “Hope.”