Uitgebloeide zonnebloemen c. 1972 - 1975

Kees Stoop made this etching, "Uitgebloeide zonnebloemen", which translates to "Sunflowers out of Bloom," with ink on paper. It's a tangle of lines, a kind of thicket of marks, and the artist seems to relish the prickly textures that come into play. I can imagine Stoop hunched over the plate, reworking and re-etching to get the precise tonality he was after. What was he thinking, I wonder, rendering this motif? These aren’t your sunny, cheerful sunflowers; they’re spent, drooping, like they’re at the end of the party, slouching towards some kind of weird demise! That said, the image is also strangely beautiful, finding a melancholy grace in decay. Stoop, in my view, is in conversation with other artists, such as Van Gogh, who found ways of pulling at the emotions using humble, accessible imagery. In this work, Stoop embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, letting a lot of meanings emerge from a single image.