Persephone

 

My drawing of Persephone from when I was around 15 years old.
Chalk pastel on paper, approximately 11”x 16”.

I can't remember what prompted me to create a chalk pastel drawing of Persephone, the goddess of Spring when I was around fifteen years old. I depicted her holding a bouquet of flowers in her crook of her right arm and smiling as she looked at a bird perched on her left hand held above her head. My art skills had been developing with more focus since I was eleven so I feel it was a decent illustration for my age. My motivation for the drawing was surely due to my interest in Greek/Roman Mythology. But, as I mentioned, I don't recall my thought processes in detail.

I was a bit surprised when my mom showed her esteem for the drawing by putting it in an oak frame and hanging it on one of the walls of our recently enclosed and furnished porch. Anyone entering our home would see it immediately as they came in the front entrance. It stayed there for many years after I had moved out from home, had gotten married and began our family. After my mom moved into the house she inherited when my grandmother passed, she took it with her. I lost track of where it ended up after my mom passed away until one of my nephews and his wife proudly showed me where they had it displayed in their home when I had visited them. I made sure to take a photo of it at that time. It was like seeing an old friend. And I was touched that my nephew and his wife cherished it.

But it wasn't only in visual art forms that I was inspired by the goddess. I would use the name Persephone for characters in creative writing assignments for school and in comics. It was usually a character with whom the main protagonist was smitten and infatuated. 

Over the years I would revisit my muse in sketchbook drawings. I'd try different iterations. In one of my favorite variations (see below), I tried to take a more naturalistic approach and give her dark hair that I imagined would be fitting for a Greek goddess. 

A few decades after my initial drawing, I revisited attempts to depict Persephone in my sketchbook.

For me, Persephone symbolized innocence, newness and rebirth. Characters that I based upon her persona were friendly, guileless and caring. Eventually I delved more into the aspect of her myth that involved her role as the Queen of the Underworld. And I was fascinated by her being a central figure in the legendary Eleusinian Mysteries and their secretive religious rites that promised initiates an intimate understanding of life, death and the afterlife. 

To be honest, I'm still figuring out aspects of my resonance with Persephone and her meaning that I feel overlaps my Christian upbringing. 

Ireland's St. Brigid seems to correlate to Persephone

I recently discovered similarities between Persephone and Saint Brigid of Ireland which gives me a fun topic to learn more about. Here's a terrific blog that has several entries on Saint Brigid.

Another aspect of my creative relationship with the figure is how I can take my early artwork and have it augmented with AI generative apps. More on that later.