The Honesty of Suggestion
When I create, I find myself returning again and again to symbolism rather than literal narrative. A literal story, with its clear sequence of events and characters, can be powerful—but for me, it often feels too fixed, too defined. Life does not unfold in neat lines. Emotion rarely announces itself with clarity. Memory blurs. Desire contradicts itself. Grief and beauty arrive together. Symbolism, with its openness, feels closer to how experience truly moves through us.
A flower that burns crimson, a face half-obscured, a surreal gesture suspended in time: these images communicate not by stating, but by suggesting. In their ambiguity lies honesty.
Emotion Beyond Words
Literal storytelling depends on words, even when rendered visually. Symbolism, by contrast, allows emotion to emerge beyond language. A distorted portrait may capture fragility more precisely than a literal depiction of sorrow. A symbolic gesture—a hand extended, a shadow looming—can contain more complexity than a paragraph of dialogue.
We know from experience that our deepest feelings often escape words. We blush, we tremble, we look away. Symbolism mirrors this truth. It lets art inhabit the non-verbal registers where emotion is lived rather than explained.
Memory as Fragment, Not Sequence
Memories rarely arrive as coherent stories. They surface in fragments—colors, scents, gestures, flashes of light. A shade of violet may recall an entire summer evening. The texture of fabric may awaken grief. These fragments are symbolic by nature; they do not narrate, they suggest.
To me, symbolic art honors the way memory lives inside us: scattered, layered, unresolved. A literal narrative risks closing memory into a single meaning. Symbolism lets it remain alive, multiple, as it truly is.
The Language of Metaphor
Metaphor is a language older than words. Cultures have always turned to it to describe the ineffable—sacred rituals, love, death, transcendence. To speak in metaphor is not to obscure meaning, but to reveal it indirectly, allowing space for interpretation.
In my own practice, I find that metaphor often carries truth more faithfully than fact. A literal story says: here is what happened. A symbolic image whispers: here is how it feels. The latter may be less precise, but it is more resonant.
Symbolism in Contemporary Art
In contemporary symbolic wall art, metaphor continues to shape emotional dialogue. Surreal botanicals, hybrid figures, and theatrical portraits all suggest rather than declare. They invite viewers to bring their own experiences to the image, completing its meaning through their memory, desire, or loss.
Literal art shows; symbolic art speaks with silence, asking the viewer to listen differently. In this way, symbolism is less about imposing meaning and more about creating space for connection.
The Subtle Honesty of the Symbolic
Why do I choose symbolism over literal narrative? Because life itself is symbolic. We live in gestures, in fragments, in fleeting impressions that cannot be told directly. To create symbolically is to embrace that ambiguity, to trust that suggestion may be more honest than declaration.
A symbol does not close meaning—it opens it. It leaves space for the unsaid, for the fragile resonance of emotion, for the mystery that lives in every memory. And it is there, in that openness, that art finds its deepest honesty.
