Lilacs

'It is impossible to paint a flower with simplistic brush-srokes...a flower should be studied as deeply as anything else. Flowers can teach artists a great deal: to completely understand the structure of a rose, it is necessary to work no less than one would to understand a human face. There is everything in a single flower that exists in nature, albeit in a more and complex form, and it is necessary to examine each flower, especially in lilac or a bouquet of wild flowers, or indeed a whole thicket until you're able to grasp the logic of its construction...I paint them as the musician paints his scales. After two hours of steady work something changes in my mind and flowers are somehow transformed into sounds...It is the grandest exercise for a painter.' (P. P. Konchalovskii, as cited in V. A. Nikol'skii, Petr Petrovich Konchalovskii, Moscow, 1936, p. 112.)