Professor Butter Beard’s Birthday “Sunflowers”
"I'm painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it's a question of painting large sunflowers." – Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo, August 21st, 1888.
Today is my 60th birthday. It makes me chuckle with disbelief even to type those words. When I take a breath and allow them, visions of my journey so far float through my soul like watching a Fellini movie in a darkened theater with perfectly buttered popcorn and Twizzlers. I vividly recall the first painting that thoroughly captured by heart and mind. It wasn’t even a painting, but an inexpensive print that my parents hung so they could see it every time they entered our front door (the Fourth Version shown below). I would sit and lose myself into the golden world of sunflowers, imagining touching the sculpted petals and smelling the warm late afternoon sunshine and plotting how I could convince my parent to change my name to “Vincent.”
“Sunflowers” is actually the name of two series of still life painting by Vincent Van Gogh. The first series, painted while the artist was in Paris in 1887, depicts a bouquet of the flowers lying on the ground, while the second series, painted when he moved to Arles a year later, shows the flowers gathered in a vase. His motivation for the second series was to express his admiration for his friend Paul Gauguin and his joyful anticipation for their upcoming time together. He wrote, “In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin, I'd like to do a decoration for the studio. Nothing but large sunflowers.”
“If I carry out my plan,” he continued, “there will be a dozen pictures. The whole thing a symphony in blue and yellow. I start working every day at dawn because the flowers wilt very quickly, and it has to be painted in one go.” The sunflowers he perfectly arranged in a vase in the morning sun naturally called for urgency since they would wilt within hours. This provided Van Gogh the opportunity to best utilize his long-standing devotion to speed. A painter unaccustomed to rapid work would never be able to seize the beauty that was wasting away before his eyes minute by minute. It is the captured golden glow of the sunflowers that speaks directly to me. The paintings were considered innovative for their use of the southern yellow spectrum, partly because newly invented pigments made all these new colors possible.
In a letter to his brother Theo, the artist wrote, “"It's a type of painting that changes its aspect a little, which grows in richness the more you look at it. Besides, you know that Gauguin likes them extraordinarily. He said to me about them, among other things: ‘that — ... that's... the flower’. You know that Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way."
Yes Vincent, you do. The sunflowers will always be yours. On this day of celebrating and reflection, I hope to honor you as well. Just as you experimented and combined all the newly discovered golden pigments, I also gathered together all my golden summer favorites onto one pallet – fresh nectarines and apricots, perfectly preserved mandarin oranges, local honey, and the yolks from eggs brought this morning at the farmer’s market. Thank you, Vincent. You woke my soul to art and may we continue to navigate this life’s journey together.
Tribute to “Sunflowers” Birthday Cake
Makes One (10-Cup) Bundt
Cake:
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 cup granulated sugar
2 whole eggs and 1 additional yolk
¾ cup vegetable oil
2 Tbsp honey
1 cup buttermilk
½ cup whole milk
1 tsp freshly grated ginger root
2 tsp vanilla paste
2 cups mixed chopped fruit, small dice (I use a mix of fresh apricots, nectarines, dark cherries and canned mandarin oranges. Save the syrup from the mandarin oranges for the syrup and icing.)
Syrup:
½ cup water
½ cup granulated sugar
3 Tbsp of the syrup from the mandarin orange tin
Icing:
2 ½ cups confectionary’s sugar
2 Tbsp whole milk
2 Tbsp of the syrup from the mandarin orange tin
1 tsp vanilla paste
1) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
2) Prep the bundt pan by brushing the interior with 2 Tbsp of melted butter and dusting with all-purpose flour
3) Cut and stir together all your mixed fruit – remember to dice it all small, or the large pieces will eventually sink to the bottom of the cake
4) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ground ginger and sugar. Set aside.
5) In the bowl of a standing mixer, whisk together in this order: the 2 eggs and the additional yolk, the vegetable oil, the honey, the buttermilk, the whole milk, the grated ginger root and the vanilla paste. Switch to the paddle and add the dry mix and mix until smooth. Take the bowl off the mixer and fold in the prepared fruit.
6) Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for roughly 40-45 minutes. Start checking the cake with a wooden skewer at 40 minutes. Do not overbake or the cake will be dry.
7) Remove the cake from the oven, let sit for 10 minutes, and then invert the cake onto a wire rack.
8) While the cake is baking, prepare the syrup. Bring to a simmer the water, sugar and mandarin syrup. Let simmer for three minutes and then pour into a glass container to cool.
9) While the cake is still warm, brush the syrup over the cake until it will not absorb any more.
10) Prepare the icing by whisking together the confectionary’s sugar, the milk, the mandarin syrup and the vanilla. When the cake is completely cool, spoon the icing over the cake and let it drip down the sides.
