Lotus Wall Art

The lotus is the only flower in this shop that belongs to two collections at once. It is a botanical subject — a real plant, with a real structure that artists have enjoyed drawing for millennia — and it is a religious one, appearing under the feet of Hindu deities and beneath seated Buddhas across the whole of Asia. Which of those you are buying depends entirely on the treatment.

Why it carries the meaning it does

The plant roots in mud and opens clean above the water, and every tradition that adopted it took the same lesson from that. In Hindu and Buddhist art it stands for something arising unstained from circumstances that ought to have stained it. Deities are shown seated on one, which is a way of saying they are of the world without being subject to it.

It also closes at night and reopens, which is why the imagery is so often about light.

The practical consequence

A lotus is the softest possible way to bring a devotional register into a room. There is no figure, no face, nothing to observe conventions about — so a translucent lotus can hang above a desk or in a bathroom where a deity image could not, while still nodding to the tradition for anyone who reads it that way. A great many people buy it purely as a flower, which is also entirely fine.

Treatments

The translucent and backlit pieces are the most striking: petals rendered as though the light is coming through them, usually on a dark ground. These read as contemporary art.

Stylised and geometric lotus work — the flower reduced to overlapping petal shapes — sits closer to pattern than to botany and pairs well with the geometric collection.

Placing it

Lotus compositions are usually centred and symmetrical, so hang them centred on something: a bed, a console, a basin. Off to one side they look unresolved.

They suit cool rooms and cool palettes better than most flowers, and they are one of very few botanical subjects that genuinely works in a bathroom.