“It may be that the snail in a seventeenth-century Dutch flower painting has eaten of the wilting rose and fretted leaf, for snails nourish themselves on green plants and decaying matter. If the flowers are meant to be reminders of mortality, the snail decrees that life moves forward, even in the smallest urges and imperceptible movements of time.”  —The Book of Symbols

Description:

Original, one of a kind gouache drawing on paper, 12” x 30”. This drawing and also an accordion artist book, made this past month—one of the first drawings made at my new log cabin home in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The mountain laurel were in full bloom all around me, the snails crawling on rocks along the creek, and all could see were symbols of connectedness all around me. 

As you move through the book the images bend and shift, flowing from one to another in a sort of dreamscape. I see this book opened up and framed flat in a shadow box or simply sitting out on a shelf for friends and family to page through and experience hands on.

Amber  M. Jensen

A flower mortality, a snail decrees life moves forward. 2020.

Gouache on Gessoed Paper