I was excited to enter this flower-of-the-month show after accidentally missing the deadline for the previous show featuring roses, my best known floral subject. The painting that you see here, “Snow Crocus” is the result of over three weeks of research, sketching, color and value studies and dozens of hours spent rendering the final painting. In this show I knew I would be up against a lot of great artists, and I imagined there would be many ‘Crocus close-up’ paintings and photos – so I made a conscious decision to do something different, and work on creating a complete painting composition. I hoped that showing a full background, atmospheric perspective and delving into the unique characteristics of this flower as snow-blooming would leave a memorable impression. The challenge was to create a landscape painting where the Crocus took center stage as the clear point of interest – instead of giving the impression of being ‘a landscape painting with some Crocus in it.’ I think it is the subtle use of color that establishes the Crocus flowers so dominantly.