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A collection of the various symbols and signs associated with love.

If you were painting a Valentine’s card, you’d want the signs of your love to be clear and noticeable. But if you were painting a portrait, you could also add some hidden symbolism about love that someone looking at the painting may only understand subconsciously.

Red: The color associated with love and passion.

Heart: From Christianity comes the belief that the heart is the seat of our emotions, particularly love. In Islam, the heart is our spiritual center. A heart symbol is used to replace the word ‘love’.

Lips: Used for kissing and therefore associated with passion. A kiss by a pair of lips painted with bright red lipstick leaves a print showing something was sealed with love.

Heart pierced by an arrow: Cupid or Eros shoots an arrow into a heart, causing the person to fall passionately in love. It explains why love is both pleasurable and painful.

Broken heart: A symbol of the loss of love, most often of a spurned or rejected lover, and the pain of this. The term ‘heartbroken’ is used for extreme sadness and grief.

Cupid: The Roman god of love, represented by a winged boy carrying a bow and arrow with which to piece his victim’s heart, causing them to fall in love.

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\\ tags: Love, Painting

The meanings associated with various flowers and plants.

Flowers have been irresistible to painters through the ages. These days we’ve lost much of the symbolism associated with them, but earlier painters chose flowers to convey very specific messages about their subjects. The meaning associated with a specific flower differs between cultures; the symbolism for each given here is from Western European culture unless specified otherwise.

Bamboo: A symbol for longevity (it’s always got green shoots) as well as strength and grace (it bends readily but doesn’t break easily). In Chinese philosophy the straight stem of bamboo symbolizes the path towards enlightenment, the segments of the stem being the steps along the way.

Carnation: A symbol of betrothal or engagement. In China, a carnation is a symbol of marriage.

Chrysanthemum: The national symbol of Japan, ‘mums are a symbol for long life.

Clover leaf: The three divided leaves of clover represent the Christian Holy Trinity of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Four-leafed clovers represent luck.

Daisy: The most basic of flowers, a white daisy is a symbol of innocence.

Deadly nightshade: A highly poisonous plant (Atropa belladonna) with purple bell flowers and small black berries. A symbol of deception, danger, and death.

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\\ tags: Flowers, Painting, Plants

A collection of the various symbols and signs associated with death.

The things that symbolize death or that we associate with mourning, vary across the world. The prime example is the use of white for mourning in the East, whereas white is traditional for celebrating a wedding in the West.

Black: In the West, the color used for death and mourning is black. Black is associated with the underworld and evil (think of black magic, which is said to draw on the power of the devil, and the saying ‘the black sheep in the family’ for someone who’s disgraced the family). Jewelery made from jet, a hard black stone that can be polished to a brilliant shine, became popular during the reign of Queen Victoria when, after the death of her husband Albert, she shunned bright jewelery as inappropriate. Kali, the Hindu god of destruction, is depicted as black.

In parts of Africa, spirits and dead ancestors are seen as white (which is why Europeans were initially welcomed with open arms).

White: In parts of the East, the color used for death and mourning is white. It’s also the color used for surrender (think of white flags being waved). Ghosts are depicted as white.

Skull: The skull of a human head. (Think of the scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet where the prince holds a skull of Yorick, a former servant, bemoaning the pointlessness and temporary nature of worldly matters.) The skull with two crossed bones underneath it of a pirate flag were to symbolize that death awaited those whom the pirates encountered. Today a skull and crossbones is sometimes used as a sign for poison.

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\\ tags: Death, Painting