Wholegrain Art - The Sunflowers made from wholegrains

I created a palette of colours to “paint” with including wheat, barley, rye, roasted barley, rolled barley, rolled oats and wholemeal flour. Working on this project was a fantastic experience, exploring a wide range of different whole grains and their versatility.

The client chose to recreate Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic sunflower painting using only whole grains and whole grain products as they felt this truly highlighted the campaign’s message that beige foods really are beautiful.

I thought that the painterly nature of Van Gogh’s work matched the textures of the grains really well.

The artwork was 250cm x 300cm and took a week to make, using thousands of the tiny grains.

Roasted barley was used for the outline of the image to give a dark, rich and distinct boarder to the sunflowers, while rye effectively recreated greenery.

To complete the image, wholegrain cereals, porridge oats and wholemeal flour were used.

I worked with the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) to create the artwork because a leading GP had given an insight into which ‘good’ beige foods we should be including in our diets such as porridge oats, wholemeal bread and rye crackers and that ‘beige foods’ are an important part of a balanced diet.