• Per aspera ad astra is a Latin expression that literally means through rough things to the stars.
• It speaks about moving through obstacles and difficulties to attain the beautiful, distant, and perfect.

To arrive at a bigger picture through little details is one of the themes in the artist's paintings. With the grand backdrop of the cosmos, a small snail is crawling up the bark of a tree (through the rough patches) toward its top (the stars).

In his poem, "If," Rudyard Kipling best expresses this concept of overcoming and human maturation:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And – which is more – you'll be a Man, my son!