A World of Inspiration for Artful Living
If you do not tell the truth about yourself
you cannot tell it about others.
Virginia Woolf
Frida Kahlo’s paintings are rich with symbolism. She often incorporated animals, plants, and ribbons to symbolize her personal relationships, as well as the great physical and emotional pain she endured in her life. You, too, may find value in utilizing symbols in your own life and art. Here’s a quick exercise to help you do that:
As every young reader of Dr. Seuss books knows, Sam-I-Am was very persistent in his attempts to get a little friend to try green eggs and ham. And this little friend stubbornly resisted until—finally—he took a tiny taste and discovered that—lo and behold—he did like green eggs and ham after all.
Most kids aren’t so pig-headed. Around this time of year, they generally love eggs of all colors—and especially the bright plastic ones filled with jelly beans and chocolates.
Colorful, decorated eggs are very much a part of the season, and Ukrainian Easter eggs, known as pysanky (pysanky is plural; the singular is pysanka) are some of the most intricately beautiful. Decorated with a wax resist (batik) method, the eggs are not painted on, but written with beeswax (the name comes from the verb pysaty, which means “to write.”)
In our post on peppermint candy canes, we noted that symbols can mean different things to different people. I suppose this should come as no surprise when there isn’t even a consensus on what symbolism means…
Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest
passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.
John Greenleaf Whittier
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We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.
Ralph Waldo Emerson [Read more...]
Have you heard the story about the origin of candy canes? It goes something like this: a candy maker in Indiana wanted to make a candy that represented his Christian faith, so he started with a piece of pure, white hard candy—white to symbolize the Virgin Birth and the purity of Jesus. He formed the candy into a “J” for Jesus. The shape also represented the staff of the “Good Shepherd,” who used it to retrieve members of his flock when they went astray. Then, because the candy maker thought the candy looked kind of plain, he added three red stripes to symbolize the blood of Christ.
This account has been repeated by some religious leaders, has occasionally appeared in the press as the authoritative answer to readers’ queries, and was even the subject of several books, including a children’s book, The “J” is for Jesus, by Alice Joyce Davidson (1998). It’s a nice story, but the thing is, according to Snopes.com (an online fact checker of urban legends), it isn’t true. [Read more...]
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