Persephone Returns

 

This idea had been brewing in my head for almost 10 years. I'd done a drawing of it years earlier but had never attempted a painting. I'm glad that I waited because the painting as I had earlier envisioned it was just a bare dead sort of wintery landscape without the snow, with Persephone running through with the flowers growing up behind. By the time I did come around to painting it I had conceived of the snowy landscape, which is one element of this painting that makes it work, I think. It's not usual for me to do anything so white, but the white background allows the colors of the flowers and the girl more independence, as well as to highlight the two extremes thematically, in that it contrasts the snow of winter and the flowers of spring and summer that much more dramatically.

In Greek Mythology Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, a goddess of vegetation. Persephone is abducted by Hades and held in the underworld. He keeps her for six months of the year and then allows her to return to her mother for six months of the year. For the six months that she's gone to the underworld Demeter is sad and the earth isn't productive. For the six months that she has her Demeter is happy and the earth is productive. So this myth is associated with the turn of the seasons. The concept of flowers springing up in the wake of Persephone is my own invention, so far as I know.

The painting did have a bit of a personal meaning to me too, at the time that I did it. My pursuit of painting, as well as other personal interests, had taken a back seat to some necessary chores regarding my parent's estate for a few years. Although I had been able to leave the estate and move back to Kansas City in 2008, the intervening years still contained several distractions as the details of that whole thing lingered. I only completed three paintings in 2010, then put it all aside in order to just wrap up some items that were going to be distractions until they were dealt with. I was able to finally clear my head and my life of those other things in the late winter of 2011, and to turn my attention entirely to painting again. So at that time I very consciously made a personal connection with the theme in the sense of a regeneration, a sort of return of productivity, and an exit from what might be termed a bit of a "winter period." Also, that previous February had brought some helacious winter storms to the area, and then the spring was very sudden. I recall writing in my journal that the winter had turned to spring with all the suddenness implied in my most recent painting.

 

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I have done another painting concerning Persephone which is very different than this. That one is called simply "Persephone" and is in the "2000s" portfolio.