I have always been fascinated by the range of messages and information conveyed by color and its affect on emotion and mood. I wanted to explore how these messages change through the manipulation of color. To achieve this I had to overcome such myths as ‘the sky is blue, and the grass is green’. By purposely rendering the palms in fantastic, boldly unnatural colors produced two important results. First, the paintings attained a visual excitement and immediate impact typical of the Pop art movement, and secondly, the visual message shifted from image to that of color. The palm image was now an icon, a stable symbol around which I could explore and experiment with color theory.