I had wanted to do another Snapdragon painting for months when I saw that the December 2007 Flower of the Month Show was Alpines. I started this as an abstraction of the alpine snapdragon. However, December came and went and I did not finish the painting. Since January's Flower of the Months show was Medicinal plants, I decided to see if the snapdragon has any medicinal qualities. This is what I found:

---Medicinal Action and Uses---The plant has bitter and stimulant properties, and the leaves of this and several allied species have been employed on the Continent in cataplasms to tumors and ulcers. It was valued in olden times like the Toadflax as a preservative against witchcraft. The numerous seeds yield a fixed oil by expression, said to be little inferior to olive oil, for the sake of which it has been cultivated in Russia.

So tumors and witchcraft.... who knew?

I began with a yellow-orange snap dragon bloom, sketched out the rough shape, and then let my imagination and perennial pull towards bright and contrasting colors take over. As I got into the paints, my main goal was to create billowing baubles of color, plumes lifting off of the canvas. I was no longer concerned with the gentle elegance of a snapdragon bloom, and the painting erupted into a competition of color and movement. This is one of the few paintings that I have completed where I enjoyed the entire process.