Persephone Evolving

Persephone Evolving. 2025, oil, mixed glass beads, handmade glass pomegranate beads by artist Janna Petrovna, vintage guipure lace, cotton embroidery floss, sewing needle.

I started painting Persephone several years ago - 2019, I think? I finished her face and hair, as well as one of her hands, but then life happened and I just stopped. Whenever I passed by her, I just didn't know what to do, but like lots of unfinished pieces, I trusted that I would figure it out given enough time. Wanting to enter her into this year's Virginia Artists Exhibition turned out to be the impetus I needed.

All the beaded and embroidered work I've been doing lately gave me just what I was looking for. When I started painting this, I was still cherishing the idea that I would be a traditional, classical, realistic oil painter in the tradition of the Renaissance greats like Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael. I had worked so hard on teaching myself to draw and paint as well as I thought I should - something that I honestly never got out of my college experience, despite earning a BFA (that's a conversation for another time). But I've come to realize that I'm really supposed to be multidisciplinary. I've never been able to stick to just one medium; I'm too much of a magpie for that. And although some people are surprised by all of the mixed media work I've produced over the last two years, that's actually what I had been doing about twenty years ago. The difference was that I hadn't yet found my voice. That was something that only surfaced because of everything I've experienced in that twenty-plus years: depression, parenting, volunteer work, teaching...

So Persephone called to me. She was unfinished and yet so full of potential, which is exactly how I felt, how I continue to feel. She represents women everywhere, who had been fed this patriarchal bullshit about marriage and children being a woman's highest calling and her only duty.

In this artwork, she's atypical of the Persephone trope, if you've ever seen a painting of this mythological goddess. She's always fair-skinned with long, flowing hair, and that is exactly what I didn't want my Persephone to look like. My choice of model was deliberate, of course. She's eyeing the pomegranate with skepticism. If you're not familiar with the story, Hades had kidnapped her and forced her to become his bride and queen of the Underworld. Her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest, was desperate to get her back, and Persephone herself was said to be despondent, eating nothing and longing for home. But before Zeus intervened, Hades convinced her to eat a few pomegranate seeds. Eating anything in the Underworld doomed one to live there forever, but Zeus brokered a deal where she could return to the surface and be with her mother for several months. She had to return to the Underworld every year, one month for every pomegranate seed she had eaten. This was the Greek explanation of the seasons, as Demeter was so overcome with grief that she refused to let anything grow when Persephone was away, thus creating winter, and Persephone became both the goddess of Spring and the queen of the Underworld. There are several versions, but that's the basic gist of the story.

My takeaway has always been the idea that Persephone had no agency. Her life was decided by others. That resonates with me. I consider myself very blessed because I've been happily married for over 25 years to a partner who believes in me and my artwork, and my children - my amazing children - understand how important my work is to me. But I often think about Virginia Woolf's idea of "a room of her own," and how, for all of my strong anti-patriarchal beliefs, I still fell for that "woman's duty" trope. I felt the pressure of needing to get married. I still felt the pressure of having children. Our household still falls largely into the categories of "his chores" vs. "her chores." I even believed for decades that I could never be a professional artist because that wasn't the kind of life available to a petite woman of color, an Asian woman, a daughter of immigrants who had no connections to the art world. I think a lot about how society's cultural norms seep into our bones without us being aware of it. How can you know you're underwater if your head has never broken the surface to breathe the fresh air? How would you even know there was a surface if you'd never had a friend or mentor let you know about it?

I don't regret my life. For all the hardships - and there have been plenty of hardships - I have the most supportive husband and children a gal could ever ask for. I've found my tribe, my art people, and I even have the privilege of giving my time to help other aspiring artists succeed. All of these experiences are what fuel my artwork and imagination. My artwork, my teaching, my parenting - it's all so thoroughly blended together, and each part deeply influences the other parts, that I'm lucky enough to say that I love my life, and I know I'm living my purpose.

Going back to the artwork, Persephone is necessarily unfinished, just like every one of us. I like that the mix of painting and embroidery highlight the evolution of my own work, and by extension, my life. Her facial expression questions the pomegranate, but she's not actually rejecting it. How could I possibly regret the experiences (good and bad) that have given me this powerful, meaningful platform?

This one definitely looks better in person. You can visit her at the Charles H. Taylor Visual Arts Center in Hampton, VA through November 8, 2025. If you look closely, you'll find the sewing needle I left embedded in her headpiece.

ps - I actually hate the taste of pomegranates!