Life After Death | Contemporary Peony Painting Series by Siyuan Ren

Life after Death

A series exploring beauty, memory and what remains after physical life.

Life after Death is a series of three paintings created after the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, exploring how beauty, memory and presence continue beyond the end of physical life.

2024 | Three Paintings | Part of Observing Life

Story of the Series

The series began with a simple decision not to throw away several cut peonies after the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Left undisturbed in the studio, the flowers dried naturally over the following weeks. Instead of collapsing into formlessness, they retained their distinctive shapes, developing intricate folds, curling leaves and sculptural forms that revealed a different kind of beauty.

I found myself returning to these flowers day after day, observing how each had preserved its own individuality. Although they were no longer living, they still seemed to possess presence. Their physical life had ended, yet something essential remained.

"Their physical life had ended, yet something essential remained."

Around the same time, I visited Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. The exhibition explored Vincent van Gogh's longing for love and the emotional life that shaped his work. Although the paintings in Life After Death are not about Van Gogh, the exhibition prompted me to reflect on absence, memory and the ways people continue to influence our lives after they are gone.

These experiences gradually came together. The dried peonies became more than botanical subjects. They became quiet reflections on the human experience of loss, remembrance and continuity. Regardless of individual beliefs about death or the afterlife, the people we love continue to shape us through memory, influence and the traces they leave behind. The flowers offered a gentle metaphor for that experience, preserving their character even after their vitality had faded.

The title also reflects a quiet play on the tradition of still life. A still life usually refers to inanimate objects arranged for observation. Here, the phrase suggests something more: although the flowers are no longer alive, they are, in another sense, still life. Their presence endures, inviting us to look again at what remains.

Life After Death explores whether beauty, identity and presence can endure beyond the end of physical life.

Through prolonged observation of naturally dried peonies, the series questions the assumption that death necessarily marks disappearance. Rather than presenting answers or making spiritual claims, the paintings invite viewers to consider how memory, character and beauty continue to exist in transformed forms.

The series asks whether careful observation can reveal continuity where we might otherwise expect only endings.

Still life painting has long reflected on the fragility of life through flowers, fruit and everyday objects. Traditionally, fading blooms remind us that beauty is temporary and death inevitable.

Life After Death approaches this tradition from a different perspective. The dried peonies are not presented as symbols of loss alone. Instead, they reveal what becomes visible when we continue looking after life has ended.

Unlike many living things whose physical forms gradually disappear, these flowers retained their distinctive structures as they dried naturally. Their petals folded rather than vanished, their stems bent into expressive gestures and each bloom preserved a remarkable sense of individuality. This observation became a metaphor rather than a conclusion.

The series does not propose answers about mortality. Instead, it leaves space for viewers to reflect on their own experiences of remembrance, change and continuity. It suggests that endings are rarely as absolute as they first appear, and that beauty often survives in forms we may overlook if we stop looking too soon.

The three paintings were created over several weeks during the winter of 2024 from direct observation of naturally dried peonies preserved after the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Rather than working from photographs, I painted with the flowers in front of me, allowing their changing forms, textures and subtle shifts in colour to guide the process.

Observing the flowers over time revealed details that would have been easy to miss in a single moment. The slow pace of working encouraged a contemplative approach, where painting became an act of sustained attention rather than simple documentation. Each flower retained its own distinct structure and personality, giving rise to three individual paintings that together form a single body of work.

When physical life comes to an end, what truly disappears, and what continues to exist in memory, beauty and the quiet traces left behind?