When I was 12 or 13 years old, I have joined the oil painting club at my high school and our first task was to do some research on a famous oil painter and study their techniques. Not too keen to look through the dusty shelves at our school library, I turned to my father's collection of art books at home and found one on Vincent Van Gogh. I remembered the moment being captivated by the colours of his works and the dynamic movements from the stokes. They were strange but exciting. I then went ahead to copy two of his works as part of my study. One of them, "The Chair" is still hanging in my house. I made another attempt to study his works again at year 12 while doing fine art studies but I have never noticed his love of florals until today.

His painting, the Sun flowers, is definitely a well known piece, but his other floral paintings have not been widely shown. I am glad to get a glimpse of them today and learned of their importance in his artist life. It turned out that painting florals had been part of the turning point from the grey mellow colours he adopted during his early painting days. And these paintings let out another side of Van Gogh that is different in his landscapes. Not only the pinks and pastels colours (rarely seen in his works) were used, but the whimsical cheerfulness they convey is different from the dynamic energy of the other works.

I took the photo from my recent visit to the NGV's exhibition of "Van Gogh and The Seasons". If you are in Melbourne, you have to see this exhibition.