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Summer, 24x24, acrylic, © Lelia Canter 2024.

“Summer” represents the season of summer in the Appalachians; a time when the distant mountains often resemble ocean waves in the haze of a spring or summer afternoon. The painting illustrates some of the flowering plants, butterflies, moths, katydids, dragon flies, fire flies, honey bees, and hummingbirds that are commonly seen in the region during this time. The “News Bee” is shown in the lower right border of the painting. In Appalachian folklore, the yellow News Bee (a species of hover fly) is said to bring omens of good news. It often will hover in front of a door or person and is considered to be very good luck if one of them alights on your finger.
The sun is represented as a sunflower. Young sunflowers track the sun from sunrise to sunset and repeat the cycle every day until maturity. Mature sunflowers face east and warm quickly in the morning light which attracts more pollinators to their thousands of tiny flowers in the sunflower’s head.
The sunflower in connected in Greek mythology to Apollo, god of the sun who turned his first love Clytie into a sunflower.