Delicate blossoms at a Parisian florist caught my eye—mimosa, bright and cheerful like tiny suns centering a galaxy of verdant, lacey leaves. I knew at once I wanted to paint it.

I chose yellow and blue: I chose blue, my favorite color, to cool the visual warmth of yellow and bring emotional harmony through complementing yellow’s bright exuberance with blue’s thoughtful tranquility. As I explored their contrast, my mind unfolded a scene of sea and sky —an imagined landscape inspired by dreams of the French Riviera and the pebbled shores of Nice, which I hoped to one day visit. It was then that I quickly realized the painting wanted more; it could not be mine as such a simple composition, one lacking my “overlapping landscapes,” so, in my signatory layering of dimensions, I let my imagination play through my painting. I placed the sea and sky upon a tabletop, a galaxy orbiting a mimosa sun, where tiny glass planets spun in their orbits and dainty blossoms blazed as the heart of a solar system. Only then did I consider the painting to be uniquely my own.