Personal Iconography: Persephone

Oil on canvass, 18" x 24". Glare due to wet paint; will varnish when dry to smooth out the surface

Queen of the Dead. Goddess of Rebirth.

A symbol of the budding and dying of nature.

Here sits Persephone in her husband’s dark house, contemplating her annual return to the earth in spring and the flowers that will once again bloom, the grain that will once again suddenly grow. And then, in the fall her return to that dark place below, with no remorse. Again and again, the endless repetition of being.

Duality is a driving force of Persephone's story. In her younger years she is often called Kore, the grain or corn maiden, yet once she has made the terrifying transition into womanhood she is mostly referred to as Persephone. She is usually depicted clothed, but here she is laid bare for our modern sensibility, where nothing is sacred.

But some things remain eternal.