my oil creation

I haven't picked up the brush in at least 6 years now so this here is an old painting, however hanging very proudly in my kitchen now. I never had any formal schooling with painting except for a few private group lessons with mostly middle school kids :) when I was 20. However brief those lessons were (maybe 4-5 total) I gained quite a lot of perspective there as well as confidence. This here is one of the works I created while in attending, it was a study of a still life which were plastic flowers in this case. I think the most difficulty I had was with the background, which was a simple pink wall, however painting it simply pink was not good enough. This is when my teacher told me repeatedly "look at the wall...what color do you see?" and I would answer "pink" and then she would say "but there is so much more there than pink." I honestly began to think that either this woman was mad or that I was just going blind. Well in fact after she explained to me that everything around us reflects colors on to us and on to other objects I started searching for those other colors in the wall and on the glass table where the vase was standing. At first I just painted random colors that the teacher had suggested are there and that I "thought" were there, later however I think I actually began to "see" the very same madness this woman was referring to.......
I was ecstatic.