April 2025Craft
Understanding Biblical symbolism in contemporary art
Wheat, thistle, sunflower — a short field guide to the language behind the work.
Symbols are a second language. Wheat speaks of harvest and provision, thistle of the curse and the fall, sunflower of a face turned toward light.
Contemporary painting often forgets this vocabulary. Recovering it doesn't mean painting like the 17th century — it means trusting that an image can carry meaning beyond what it depicts.