Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of the sun. Hades kidnapped Persephone and brought her to the underworld. There are two versions of the story. One is that she ate a pomegranate seed which doomed her to hell, but artist Ty Meier prefers the other version, in which she fell in love with Hades and they got hitched. Either way, to appease the furious mom they worked out sort of a time-sharing agreement where Persephone spends half the time with her mom and half the time with her husband, but her mom, spitefully, turns out the sun when she’s gone and that’s why we have summer and winter.
Ty created this artwork while attempting to do a series of artworks for Valentines day about the great love stories of the Greek pantheon but he was frustrated to find that for the most part the Greek Gods were just terrible: They lied, cheated, and outright raped their way through Greek history. The next best love story was Cupid and Psyche and even then, Cupid sneaking into Psyche's bedroom and insisting she not look at him wasn’t great. Ty gave up on it and moved on to blue-footed booby mating rituals and other animal love stories. Persephone is one of the very few people Ty has drawn. He generally sticks to critters saying “What do we need more people for?”
This artwork is a print mounted to a craft-board, lacquered up and brushed with glossy acrylic to give it depth and glow.
