Symbolism in Art: What It Is, Why Artists Use It, and How to Find Your Own Symbols

How to Find Deeper Meaning in Your Art 5:21

Symbolism in art is the use of an object, color, animal, or character to represent an idea beyond itself. A lion roars with courage. A deep red rose burns with passion. A white dove carries peace. A fox cocks its head and watches you with cunning eyes. Nobody has to say a word, and if you’ve seen a painting with that imagery, you already understood it before you could explain it. That instant, wordless understanding is exactly what a symbol does.

Merriam-Webster calls a symbol “something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance.” The artist’s version is simpler: a symbol gives legs, and actually life, to something intangible, so we can finally see it. Below is what symbolism does in a painting, why so many artists choose it, and how to find symbols that belong to you instead of borrowing everyone else’s.

What is symbolism in art?

Symbolism in art is when one thing in a painting stands for something else, usually a characteristic or an idea. The symbol gives form to a feeling you can’t otherwise point at, so a viewer sees it on the canvas instead of being told about it in words.

Take the lion. Picture it standing tall, full mane, head tipped back, mouth open, teeth bared. You can almost hear the roar and feel the strength in its legs and back. That’s why a lion so often stands for courage, strength, leadership, and royalty. Nobody has to point it out to you. The meaning grabs you, and you stand a little taller yourself.

That’s the whole mechanism. A symbol is a shortcut from the eye to the heart: the image enters through your vision, and the meaning lands somewhere deeper, fast.

Why do artists often choose a symbolic approach to their artwork?

Artists choose a symbolic approach because a symbol can say more than any literal picture. In the Mastery Program lesson on symbolism, Elli describes symbols as multifaceted: they “bypass our intellect” and go straight to the gut, which is why a symbolic painting can move someone before they can put words to it. Here are the reasons that come up again and again:

1. A symbol says more with less. A plain depiction shows what’s there. A symbol shows what’s there and what it means, so one bird or one doorway can carry hope, loss, or longing without a caption.
2. It reaches feeling before reasoning. The viewer feels the courage in a lion before they could explain why. That’s the difference between a picture someone admires and a painting that grips them.
3. It keeps opening up. Because a good symbol carries several meanings at once, people who live with a symbolic painting for years keep finding new layers in it. A literal image tends to give everything away on the first look.
4. It invites the viewer in. A symbol leaves room for the viewer to bring their own memories to it, so they feel part ownership of what the painting means. Collectors love that, and it gives a gallery far more to talk about when they show the painting.
5. It makes an artist recognizable. Symbols repeat. When the same images keep returning across your paintings, they build continuity, and people start to know a painting is yours before they read the signature.

Some artists choose it for a simpler reason too: the subject asked for it. Many painters put something in a painting on instinct and only understand what it meant months later. The symbol arrived first and the meaning caught up.

What is the role of symbolism in art?

The role of symbolism in art is to carry the meaning an image can’t state outright. It turns a depiction of a thing into a statement about an idea, and it gives the viewer a reason to keep looking after they’ve recognized what’s in the frame.

Art history is full of this. In 17th-century Dutch still lifes, painters added skulls, hourglasses, guttering candles and wilting flowers as reminders that life is short. Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill (1628), at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pairs a skull with a writing quill: a whole reflection on time and mortality, painted as objects on a table. That family of symbols, called memento mori, is probably the most famous recurring set of symbols in Western art.

For a working artist, symbolism plays one more role: it becomes a personal vocabulary. The images you return to turn into the words of a visual language only you speak fluently.

How is a symbolic painting different from a portrait or a narrative painting?

A symbolic painting depicts something that stands for a deeper meaning. The Mastery Program sorts paintings into three kinds, and seeing all three makes the symbolic approach easier to spot:

• A portrait or depiction shows a person, place, animal or still life as it is. It can have mood, light and a beautiful color story, but there’s no hidden meaning behind it. A gorgeous mountain range painted for its own sake belongs here.
• A symbolic painting depicts the same kinds of subjects, but they represent something. The bird stands for hope, the open door for possibility.
• A narrative painting is symbolic and also tells a story: a moment where something just happened or is about to. Clues are left for the viewer to piece together. David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash at Tate is a famous example: a single empty chair, a modern house, and a splash from someone you never see. Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want catches a Thanksgiving turkey a second before it touches the table.

None of the three is better than the others, and any style can carry symbols. Realism makes the meaning easiest to read, but expressionist, abstract and stylized paintings use symbols just as often through color, repeated marks and shapes.

What’s the difference between a symbol and a motif?

A symbol is one image that stands for an idea; a motif is a recurring emotional idea that keeps coming back across your paintings. If the symbol is the image, the motif is its return.

A motif can return as the same symbol every time, or as different images carrying the same feeling. In the Mastery Program lesson on motifs, the example is a feeling of being trapped that appears as a corset in one painting and a birdcage in another. Same emotional idea, two symbols. Most artists who have painted for years have motifs whether they planned them or not, because symbols that matter to you keep returning, and repetition is what turns them into a language.

Should you use common symbols or create your own?

Use common symbols to read art and personal symbols to make it. Shared symbols like the lion and the dove are worth knowing, because they unlock centuries of paintings. In your own art, though, a well-worn symbol tends to feel generic, and a symbol tied to one group can make everyone outside that group feel left out.

That’s the argument the Mastery Program makes: the more personal a symbol is, the more universal it becomes. A symbol drawn from your own memory carries a specific feeling, and specific feelings are the ones other people recognize in themselves. A borrowed symbol only carries its dictionary meaning.

How do you create your own symbols in art?

You find your own symbols by starting from attraction and letting the meaning arrive later. The Mastery Program’s rule is that symbols are remembered, felt, and returned to, which means you find them in your own life. If you write out what your painting should mean and then illustrate it, the result usually reads like a riddle or a sermon. If you paint what you’re drawn to, meaning catches up.

A simple way to begin:

1. Notice what you keep wanting to paint. Hold off on meaning for now and ask only what you’re attracted to. Strange and specific beats obvious: “a tiny door” will take you further than “doors.”
2. Follow it back to a memory. When did you first meet this thing? A film you watched a hundred times as a child, a walk in the woods, a trip. Pick the memory with the strongest feeling attached.
3. Name the feeling. Wonder, safety, curiosity, possibility. One or two words.
4. Ask where else you’ve felt it. This is where the symbol arrives. When a memory from childhood and a moment from last year carry the same feeling, the image connecting them is yours.

Keep a running list of the symbols you find. Some you’ll paint for decades; some you’ll retire when they stop meaning anything to you. Either is fine. The marks you make and the images you return to are part of your own art style, and the 7 elements of art are the grammar underneath every symbol you paint. Color carries meaning too, so the guide to what colors represent is worth keeping nearby.

How do you keep symbolism from feeling forced?

You keep symbolism honest by letting it enrich the painting instead of turning it into a puzzle. Mystery invites people in; confusion pushes them away. If a viewer feels they need the artist’s notes to “get it,” the symbol has stopped serving the painting.

The opposite mistake is spelling the meaning out so completely that there’s nothing left to discover. The strongest symbolic paintings leave room for the viewer’s own story, and they never preach. Paint what you’re drawn to, keep your symbols personal, and trust the viewer to feel the rest.

Quick answer: what is symbolism in art?

Symbolism in art is the use of an object, color, animal, or character to represent an idea beyond itself. A lion stands for courage, a dove for peace, a skull for the shortness of life. Artists choose a symbolic approach because it lets one image carry a feeling, a memory, and a meaning at once, and because symbols repeated over time become a visual language people recognize as yours.

Symbolism is also one of the most learnable parts of painting. You begin by spotting the symbols in paintings you love, then by noticing what keeps turning up in your own sketchbook. The rest of our art history and famous paintings collection is full of paintings to study this way, and if you want a guided place to start putting it into your own art, our Two Week Challenge is built for exactly that first step.

Frequently asked questions

What is symbolism in art?

Symbolism in art is the use of an object, color, animal, or character to represent an idea larger than itself. A lion can stand for courage, a dove for peace, a red rose for passion. The symbol gives an intangible feeling a visible form, so a single image can carry layers of meaning a viewer feels rather than reads.

Why do artists often choose a symbolic approach to their artwork?

Artists choose a symbolic approach because a symbol can say more than a literal picture. It reaches the viewer's feelings before their reasoning, it carries several meanings at once so the painting keeps revealing more over years, and when a symbol repeats across many paintings it ties an artist's paintings together into something people recognize as theirs.

What is the role of symbolism in art?

The role of symbolism in art is to carry meaning the image can't state outright. A symbol turns a depiction into a statement about an idea or a feeling, invites the viewer to bring their own experience to it, and gives an artist a visual vocabulary that repeats from painting to painting.

What are some common symbols in art and what do they mean?

Some symbols recur across centuries because they read instantly. A lion means courage, strength, and royalty. A dove means peace and purity. A red rose means passionate love. A skull or an hourglass, in a Dutch vanitas still life, means time running out. Color works the same way: red for passion or danger, white for innocence, gold for the divine.

What is the difference between a symbol and a motif in art?

A symbol is a single image that stands for an idea. A motif is a recurring emotional idea that keeps returning across an artist's paintings, sometimes as the same symbol and sometimes as different images carrying the same feeling, the way a feeling of being trapped might return as a corset in one painting and a birdcage in the next.

How do you create your own symbols in art?

Start from attraction instead of meaning. Notice what you keep wanting to paint, follow it back to the first memory you have of it, name how that moment felt, and ask where else in your life you've felt the same way. Symbols found that way are personal, and personal symbols reach more viewers than borrowed ones.