Garden of Death

Garden of Death by Hugo Simberg, Watercolor and Guache, 1896.

I truly love this painting of our friend Death, with traditional grim reaper figures watering and lovingly tending a garden. Simberg's symbolism and storytelling is rich and wonderful with Death directly related to, and causal of, rebirth and renewal (the garden). I think this perfectly tells of the cycles of life and death as a natural and symbiotic process. Text tends to say the interpretation of this work is a mystery, it seems quite simple to me.