• The artist has always been fascinated by metaphorical representations of human life.

• Plants and trees surround us, create our environment and contain many metaphors.

• Metaphors using a floral theme are found in Miracle of Birth, Amaryllis, Love Confession, Ocean Sprouts, Tree of Life, and other paintings by the artist. Human birth, growth, and development have parallels in the world of flora, as testified by idiomatic expressions, comparisons, and poetic devices of the language we use. There is, for example, a sad Russian song where an oak and a rowan tree are used as images of a man and a woman who suffer under the circumstances that keep them apart. And, according to Roger Caillois, a tree by itself is lonely.

In the painting, a man and a woman are two leaves on one tree. We can think of it as that mythological Tree of Life with the biblical Adam and Eve, the progenitors of mankind.