It’s hard being a flower, loved at the peak of your beauty and tossed aside the minute a petal gets droopy.

But artist Carol Goldmark makes a compelling spin on decaying blossoms in her exhibit Fleurs Mortes, up at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art through Oct. 2. 

Goldmark uses flowers and insects in varying degrees of vitality as metaphors for life and death, beauty and decay, the passage of time, and the gradual disintegration of human flesh, bones, and organs. The resulting hybrid imagery explores the metaphysical relationship between flowers and flesh. Visit sloma.org for more information.