A Gallery of Sunflowers for Ukraine has been on display at Gallery Citrine
since the beginning of April. Every piece in the show is focused on sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine. Donna Launey, owner of Gallery Citrine, says she was inspired to create the exhibition when she noticed different artists posting art featuring sunflowers online in support of Ukraine. Launey wondered how she could harness this effort and raise enough money to make a real difference. She says she put a call out to artists and ended up with 150 pieces of art donated.
“There’s a lot of different media. There are a lot of different interpretations of the sunflower. We even have one of our resident artists here is a school teacher. And she had her second grade students paint sunflowers. So we even have amazing children art available. So, it’s just quite a wide variety.”
Launey finds the sunflower to be a happy flower and says she thought it was the perfect subject for this particular exhibit. And that’s precisely because it isn’t focused on war themes.
“Depicting war is usually so graphic and dark. With this, you get something that’s beautiful. And it kind of provides that sense of hope.”
Launey says 100% of the funds raised from the sale of the artwork will be donated to savethechildren.org, to specifically help Ukrainian children displaced by war. A Gallery of Sunflowers for Ukraine is on view through May 1st.
