For Love and Open Hearts

For Love and Open Hearts is a meditation on the fullness and fragility of life, expressed through the language of still life.

At its centre stands a French Hollandais Nouveau vase dated 1759. The bouquet it holds expands beyond flowers into a theatre of symbols. A book of mathematical drawings and equations, alongside a polyhedral watercolour gesturing toward geometry and quantum theory, points to the hidden structures of reality, the invisible architecture underlying existence. In contrast, the sacred heart anchors the composition in spiritual symbolism: the heart not merely as an organ, but as the seat of consciousness and a bridge between the human and the Divine.

Rivans’ daily meditation practice currently centres on heart-based awareness and this work grows directly from that focus. In many spiritual traditions, the heart represents the soul’s deepest field of perception and compassion.

The lit match speaks of impermanence; the egg and bees of continuity and creation; the climber of striving; the deer of instinctive grace. Each element becomes part of a wider contemplation: how to live fully, attentively, and courageously.

For Love and Open Hearts is ultimately about alignment, between intellect and intuition, science and spirit, fragility and wonder. It is a reminder to live as much as possible from the heart’s centre, where love, curiosity, and consciousness meet.

Personal note…

While building the floral collage, Rivans was reminded of the gardens at Greenhill Estate. Their cultivated abundance prompted her to replace the original house depicted on the vase with her own photographs of the estate and its gardens. These images now form both the architectural heart of the vessel and the backdrop upon which the composition rests, grounding the symbolic imagery in lived experience and memory.