I painted this during my senior year at USAFA. When I completed the painting, I realized that I had left out the pistil - the female part of the flower. I feel that this painting represents the part of me that felt how women weren’t fully accepted and respected in the male dominated military and service academy culture. Fifty years later, women are still at USAFA and going strong. I like to think that if I were at the Academy today that I would feel more like an equal and that I would paint a complete flower with both the male and female parts.