Persephones Scream Print

From the collection "White Noise", exhibited Sydney, Australia 2010. (Original sold at exhibition). The figures in my paintings are symbols or metaphors for ideas and concepts gleaned from philosophy, scientific theories, physics and literature. For White Noise I have chosen to delve into Greek Mythology and explore the myth of Persephone - Goddess of the Underworld. The myth is thought to have been created to explain the changing of the seasons, however, the Ancient Greeks also revered Persephone (along with Orpheus, Bacchus and Dionysus who descended into Hades and returned) as a philosophical basis for Orphism; an early Hellenistic belief in reincarnation - the eternal return. Orphics believed that human souls were divine and immortal, yet doomed to live for a period of time caught within a grievous cycle of successive bodily lives. This belief is not dissimilar to the Buddhist philosophy of Samsara. In short, the Orphics believed in the cycle: Life/ Death/Life/Truth. Without Persephone, Hades King of the Underworld (or death), could not continue to exist alone. Hades abducted the goddess, married her and made her eat pomegranate seeds (the fruit of the underworld), which kept the goddess trapped in an eternal return to life and death; on earth with her mother Demeter during Spring and Summer and in the underworld with Hades through Autumn and Winter. It was from Orphism that the first Greek philosophers were born, each successive generation of philosophical thinkers, endeavored to prove the Orphics wrong, and thus emerged the beginning of the end of mythology; of Gods and Goddesses to explain the meaning of existence. It is from Orphism that the gradual steps were made toward the scientific reason of today. The bride is therefore a complete symbol of beginning and end, the end of innocence, the beginning of a union of knowledge and the initiation of marriage as a right of passage toward a cycle of birth, death and the search for truth.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:10 W x 10 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:15.25 W x 15.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.