Snail painting (Patreon)

I’ve been thinking about snails recently. there’s been a lot more moisture in the air recently so there’s more snails around. I spent the better part of Easter looking at Jan van Huysum paintings and I love the way he painted little snails in his flower still-lifes. It’s like an elegant suggestion that these arrangements of flowers are beautiful obejcts in our eyes but nature has other plans for them. Snails move at their own pace gobbling up leaves and leaving a trail of mucus. What a life! A snail is a beautiful microcosm of Nature itself. It’s soft primordial ancient slimy body topped with hard shiny spiral shell. Refined beauty and form on top of formless hungry chaos. It’s absurd really! And that’s why I love snails.