“The Promise of Spring”

12”x30” acrylic & gold leaf on canvas, 2025

The story of Persephone is simultaneously threatening and seductive, empowering and relevant. The concept of the young goddess being a victim never resonated with me. I felt like there was something deeper embedded in the allegory, a reckoning of the subconscious and a reclamation of power.

Perhaps in her abduction by Hades, Persephone was actually captured by her own unconscious and ignorance. However, as she ate the pomegranate, she integrated these abandoned parts of herself and was therefore brought into balance, liberation, and her queendom.

In the land of the living, Persephone is seen as a perfect, pure, and naive maiden. Then, while in the underworld for those winter months each year, she sits atop the throne as the queen of the underworld. She is both of these women.