A winter resident of the Gulf Coast since the early 1950s, William Pachner celebrates the natural landscape of Florida in this abstract painting. As with much of Pachner's work, viewers are not always sure what they are looking at. Not only is the subject matter abstracted, but it also acts as a metaphor. The energy of the colors play off one another and buzz with feeling, resulting in what the artist calls an “imagined landscape, a scene from his inner life.” Pachner states, "It is memory, it is imagination, it is spontaneity, it is conscious and unconscious. Finally, then, it has to be art. If it isn't art, screw it. What is it then? A pretty picture? Confetti?” Born in Czechoslovakia in 1915, Pachner lost sight in his left eye at age 5, when the knife he was using to sharpen a pencil slipped. Despite this injury, he became a professional illustrator, immigrating to the United States in 1939. In 1946, Pachner learned that the Nazis had murdered his entire family and ended, among other things, his career as a commercial illustrator. He began painting and in 1951 started teaching art in Florida. He eventually began to lose sight in his other eye, and by the early '80s, could no longer work in color. He turned to black and white, then collage, relying on others to help him place the pieces. He eventually became completely blind and stopped producing art.

In Sunflower, Cole created an elaborate composition of a sunflower by repeatedly scorching the hot surfaces of irons onto the canvas. The motif refers to the artist Vincent van Gogh, who likewise employed this imagery. Cole’s act of scorching the canvas suggests the branding of skin. The resultant patterning is also akin to West African printed cloth. In a spiritual context, the scorched painting represents the force of Ogun, the African god of iron, labor, and war and the “patron saint” of metalworkers and blacksmiths among the Yoruba people of West Africa. Cole evokes Ogun through his choice of materials and motifs, and relates to the deity as an artist himself through the same means.