PERSEPHONE’S BANQUET: Persephone & Friends
PERSEPHONE'S BANQUET: Persephone & Friends
Price: SOLD
Art Medium: Acrylic & mixed media on canvas
Size: 61 cm x 61 cm
Year: 2021
PERSEPHONE’S BANQUET : Persephone & Friends
Persephone was abducted by Hades and tricked into eating pomegranate seeds that kept her bound to him and the underworld during Autumn and Summer months.
In my version of her story upon her release she goes to the taverns, sits alone and makes friends with the people sitting at the neighboring tables. She offers pomegranate and skillfully opens the fruit for them. Her fingers stained with its juice, she is relaxed, uninhibited, independent and oblivious to the myth’s claim on her
Persephone embodies the all-pervasive feminine, force in nature. I suggest that she has ingested all aspects of the myth, Hades himself, her mother and the seasons. She is the law and the director of her own myth
This is one of 4 paintings I completed in 2021 as part of my RANDEVOUZ AT THE TAVERN Series. They explore the metaphor of the tavern as a magical meeting place. Similar to the popular invitation: “who from the world stage would you invite to dinner?” through art I take liberty as a painter and storyteller to create space for characters from Greece’s cultural tapestry to come together for the first time, bridging dimensions of folklore, history and mythology.
There is an art to being a good host, bringing friends together who sometimes are strangers with only one person in common. Such meetings create new relationships and opportunities for connection. The art viewer is an additional guest, at each table of the ‘Rendezvous at the Tavern’. You are invited into the conversation, free to respond, reflect and interpret perhaps pass judgment on what you see The subjects of these paintings are given the opportunity to retell their stories in new ways. These archetypes are both universal and Hellenic, belong to the diasporic collective and are part of my personal inner world.
Artistically, I noticed a gradual evolution from an iconic and abstract figurative language to more realistic rendering of the human figure. So too the series and its subject matter is sure to continue and evolve as it has stylistically.
$568,507.00