"Sunflowers" oil on canvas -- 48x48" I just found out that this was awarded "Best of Show" in the 14th Annual Fine Arts Exhibition at the Village Theater at Cherry Hill in Canton, Michigan. Besides painting landscapes en plein air, I also love painting still lifes. They're easier because they don't move and the weather's always the same! Setting a still life up always takes me DAYS. I'm always rearranging things, adding items, taking stuff out. Through experience, I realized it's better to take my time to find a composition that excites me. If it's boring from the beginning, you might as well not even start painting it! So I'd set this arrangement up on the floor of the dining room (which has never been used as a dining room) and it just didn't look right. Something was missing. I turned around to get a glass of water in the kitchen and saw the solution: the big vase of sunflowers I'd bought that morning at the farmer's market! I grabbed it and plopped it down in the center of everything. Voila! And boy, those leaves were a challenge to paint! The bowl of floating lemons was a blast. And white sheets -- ah, I could paint wrinkled, folded white sheets all day, every day, for the rest of my life!