INTRODUCTION TO PERSEPHONE RISING

The Ancient Greek Myth of PERSEPHONE rising from The Underworld gives me a motif to portray something about our World to-day. It allows me to show how human beings could resonate in harmony with Nature, rather than destroy it. The central gesture of each of these images is Persephone’s gaze.  She looks at the viewer as the viewer looks at her. Some of the images are deliberately large, six feet tall (approx 2 metres), so that the viewer and Persephone are roughly on the same eye-level. The viewer’s field of vision is thus surrounded by the light and colour of Persephone’s rising from The Underworld to bring about Spring and Summer. It is a little like an ancient icon. The viewer’s gaze is bathed in sculpted, coloured daylight.

The darker aspects of the Myth are alluded to in some of the images, as a reference to the darker aspects of the way the human species is currently treating Nature. One of the images, The Metamorphosis of Persephone, is painted specifically for children, and contains various hidden visual puzzles for them to solve.