MEANINGS & METAPHORS

You’ll see several recurring icons in Donna Howell-Sickles’ artwork, and none by accident.

“Symbols are a vast language,” she explained. “And an indistinct one because they mean something slightly different to everybody.”

Some are inherent allegories with long histories of human interpretation.

“A red rosebud could symbolize the perfection of femininity; that’s something that’s been around for like 3,000 years, it wasn’t just a 1950s florist with a really good P.R. campaign that made us associate women with red roses,” she said. “The white dove, that’s always been a female symbol. Some of these sound trite to us, because they’ve been used a lot, but they are, in truth, our symbols. Stars as well, either actual constellations or five-point stars. And then apples are a symbol of knowledge, and when you cut an apple open ‘sideways’, so to speak, you have that five-pointed star in there; it just reinforces inside and out, all the interconnections in the way we think.”

And others are proverbial ‘Easter eggs’ of her own inference and expression.

“For instance, I use triangle shapes,” she explained. “Three-sided structures, for one, are incredibly stable, and it’s a structure that we have used as humans within our religious thought for a very long time. There are dozens of interpretations. When I point the triangle up, I am thinking of seeking inspiration, and when I am pointing it down, it’s more of receiving inspiration; and that applies to whatever is going on in that painting, whether they’re seeking inspiration through that activity or receiving inspiration from it.”