In 1997, artist Cameron Cross was teaching high school art in Altona, Canada, when he decided to give the town a massive gift. To honor Altona’s status as “the Sunflower Capital of Canada,” he would erect , a 75-foot-tall sculpture of an easel displaying a reproduction of one of Vincent van Gogh’s (1853–1890) famed sunflower paintings. But the giant Van Gogh’s future was recently in jeopardy after wind damage forced its removal.
A powerful windstorm on February 28 blew off an eight-foot square panel of the 24-by-32-foot painting (although it was recovered). More damage followed amid high winds on March 15. As officials worked to remove the four-ton painting from its stand, the town conducted a “Big Easel Restoration” survey to ask residents if they supported plans to repair and reinstall the work.
A solid majority voiced their approval of the artwork, with 68 percent of the nearly 600 respondents voting that it was important that Altona save . The results showed that 60 percent wanted to make sure that the easel continued to display a painting (rather than a printed image), and 61 percent specifically wanted to keep the Van Gogh sunflowers.
“We will be rebuilding the fiberglass canvas from scratch, and I’ll be repainting the image,” Cross told me. “This will take place next year, in 2026.”
The idea for a giant easel came to Cross one day during his 45-minute commute to Altona, when he realized that two hydropoles, or utility poles, with an X-shaped support between them, resembled a giant easel. Then a young muralist, he was excited to recreate not just the imagery of Van Gogh’s sunflowers, but the heft of the brushstrokes and impasto, building up the surface with fiberglass to sculptural effect before painting with acrylic urethane enamel, an automotive paint.
“Van Gogh’s work is so thick and textured. I wanted it to look like a painting on an easel, not just a mural on the side of a building,” Cross explained, noting that painting the image took about a month.
In 1999, Cross put up a second version of in Altona’s sister city of Emerald, Australia. A third easel has been a landmark on the outskirts of Goodland, Kansas—the Sunflower State—since 2001. All three towns are home to an annual sunflower festival.
Cameron Cross applying a protective coating to one of his monumental public art installations . Photo courtesy of the artist.
Local news outlet Pembina Valley Online has been following the saga of Altona’s best-known public artwork for years, including during its temporary removal and restoration in 2017. Cross made modifications to the work to facilitate future repairs, reattaching the painting to the easel with bolts, rather than by welding. The repairs cost about CA$40,000 ($30,400).
But even then, Cross had recommended to the town that the entire canvas be replaced. After installing the subsequent versions of , he had a much better understanding of how to make the work last—and the mistakes that were causing Altona’s to deteriorate. In Australia, engineers had told him that the wooden under layer needed to be made from pressure-treated marine-grade plywood, and the fiberglass on top needed a gel coat before being painted.
This time around, the town projected a cost of CA$27,000 ($19,500) to install a printed replica that would last about 10 years, or CA$70,000 ($50,500) for Cross to repaint on marine-grade plywood that should last for over 25 years. To remove the artwork permanently would have come with a CA$20,000 ($14,400) price tag. The town has been considering repairs since 2023, and will be filing an insurance claim to help cover some of the cost.
Cameron Cross painting one of his monumental public art installations . Photo courtesy of the artist.
The prospect of taxpayers helping shoulder the continuing expense to maintain the artwork was a problem for some survey respondents.
“At this point we have spent enough money repairing the painting, I think there are better areas around Altona where that money could be spent more wisely,” one respondent wrote. “The painting doesn’t draw attention to Altona like we al [sic] think it does.”
Another was more succinct: “Get. Rid. Of. It.”
Others thought the restoration might be an opportunity to change up the display, suggesting opening the easel for works by “local talents or local students” or converting it into a digital billboard that could rotate imagery, including the Van Gogh.
But many clearly love —an “iconic” and “essential landmark”—just the way it is.
“I have had family come from different parts of Canada and the first thing they ask is ‘where’s the painting? Can we go see it?’ I grew up with it as a huge beacon of ‘home,’ and I hope my kids will also get to see and appreciate it,” one respondent said. “I think getting rid of it would be a huge mistake.… Home wouldn’t quite feel the same without it.”
Online sources indicate that the Altona sculpture was recognized as “the largest painting on an easel” by the Guinness Book of World Records, but Cross said he never pursued such certification. The Guinness website currently lists a comparatively diminutive 56-foot tall easel from India as having become the record-holder for the largest easel in 2008. (Another authority called the World Record Academy declared the Kansas version “the world’s largest easel” in 2023.)
In the 28 years since Cross first conceived of the project, Altona’s agriculture industry has declined considerably, but the town’s giant sunflower canvas has helped keep this history alive.
“I’m still getting emails from all over the world from people who drive by and want to take a look for themselves. It’s certainly put Altona on the map in that regard,” Cross said. “And it’s in pop culture. It’s been in books and magazines and movies and TV shows and questions—all those kinds of things.”
Originally, Cross’s plan was to create seven versions of around the world, one for each of Van Gogh’s still life paintings of a vase of sunflowers. There are four distinct compositions, and three repetitions of two of them. Firebombing during World War II destroyed one version, and another is in a private collection that never exhibits it publicly.
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers (1888) at the National Gallery, London. Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images.
But the others are in some of the world’s leading museums, at London’s National Gallery, Munich’s Neue Pinakothek, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art in Tokyo. (The Amsterdam and Tokyo canvases are repetitions of the London one, and the Philadelphia painting of the Munich one.)
The original Altona sculpture replicates the London version, and Australia’s is the Amsterdam repetition. The Kansas sunflowers match the private collection sunflowers, the first version painted by the artist. For the four still-unrealized versions of , Cross hopes to find sites in Japan, South Africa, Argentina, and either the Netherlands or France with connections to either Van Gogh or sunflowers.
“The city in Canada, they said yes immediately. I presented to the city in Australia, and they said yes immediately. I presented to Kansas. They said yes immediately. So it was like, ‘how hard could this be?’ I quit my job, and I thought, ‘being a public artist is fun,’” Cross said. “The next 200 places said no. But I’m not giving up.”
The concept of the giant easel still captivates the artist, and he’s actually expanded his vision beyond Van Gogh. Cross wants to bring giant easels to different cities around the world in a project now called “The Easel Project“—but to turn over the canvas to local artists to let them display their work. (A digital screen would be another option.)
Cross is hoping to kick off the project with a site in the Middle East, where the easel may have been invented, but working at this scale in public art is understandably challenging.
“It’s like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and every piece has to fit perfectly. And in those pieces are land acquisition and insurance and volunteers and funding and engineers and fabricators,” Cross said.
“An easel is usually something that an artist would put a work of art on. But in this case, it’s a monumental piece of art itself because it’s so large,” he added. Cross is grateful that enough people in Altona see it that way that he’ll have a chance to recreate it with tested materials that will last for decades to come.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
