WOW! Brilliant work and brilliant thoughts put to words Ganesh. What you said is absolutely true, sometimes it really helps if you just let the mind wander and take its own route in imagining and interpreting the visual cues. Having everything well defined undermines the role for imagination, which is the main stimulus for abstract art. In my opinion you should not have divulged the identity of the subject so people could have come back to you telling you what they "feel" of the image. It would have been a nice experiment to see how far people let their imaginations run.
WONDERFUL

first thought that comes to my mind is tiger....shto through transparent earth lying down ....a soft tiger paw...maybe siberian ..as sriharsha said, you should have left the subject untold...wud have been fun to see what folks imagine this to be

Ganesh, this definitely works. Love the range of tones and gradations of yellow here. Had the stamens been sharp, it would have been just another macro shot of a flower.

Apana

Nice image. I would concur with you on 'foot print of an animal' look. In this case the stamen/stigma are slightly towards the right of the frame. Would like to know your thoughts on centering the stamen/stigma (i.e. shifting it towards left from where it is now)...
There's a rim-lighting (a glow) around the bottom 2 stamens & I thought it would be nice to keep them facing inside the frame (i.e. with more space to the right of them).

Kaushik, I though centering it may give it a static feel, so I composed it a bit off center. May be a leaving a few pixels at the bottom may add too. One thing I found in all these composing experiements is mind can recognize very tiny shifts and it needs precise cropping. Thanks for your views..

Loved this image a lot. The abstractism makes me visualize "Lord Ganesh" in this image. It seems he is squatting with one of the legs folded and upright, and a hand raised. The brighter petals around produce the Halo effect and the darker stamen in the center being the belly.