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© Artists of Studio 155, 2011


BEYOND WORDS: THE SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE OF PLANTS

2301 Kentmere Parkway
Wilmington, DE 19806
1.866.232.3714 (toll free)

February 4 to April 8, 2012
extended until July 29, 2012

Artist Reception:
Sunday, March 18, 2012
1:30 - 4:00 pm

Studio 155 Artists




Throughout history and across cultures, artists have used plants as symbols.  Some of the earliest associations can be found in ancient cultures, such as the Romans who linked Venus, the Goddess of love, with the rose or the Egyptian use of the lily to symbolize Isis, the Goddess of fertility as well as the association of beauty with the lotus in Asian and Indian cultures. 
Plant symbolism reached a high point in Medieval Christian art, when religious craftsmen and artists used plants to explain the meaning of church parables and doctrine to a largely illiterate population.  Inspired by Medieval artistic quality, the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite artists revived the use of this ancient plant-language by attentively studying Nature and realistically depicting plants to provide additional layers of meaning in their paintings.