Macro

While studying pictures of tulips for the Roots picture, I came across a few close-up pictures and was struck by the contrast of the dark stamens and the background colour field. In a thing of beauty there is also a the dark spider points of the stamen. Apart from the visual impact, there exists the fact that a flower is a plant’s sexual organ surrounded by petals and colours which attract pollinators. It is these strong elements which drew me to attempt the picture. At the time of painting I had on hand only one small canvas, but realized that the strong design, and particularly the fact that the picture was a close-up, would e more surprising if the artifact itself was a small thing with a big subject. The painting was remarkably quick and easy to accomplish. The only change I had to make from the original design was to add a seventh stamen. Once the first strong design was painted, I realized that there was a gap in one area of the picture, and had to sacrifice the truth of six tulip stamens to achieve balance.