Persephone’s Table

A few years ago, I found a very old painting tucked into the back corner of an antique shop, resting on the floor almost out of sight. It took my breath away. A tall earthenware jug, grapevines, and pomegranates were arranged across a table, the artist unknown. I left without buying it, only to have my mother return later and surprise me with it as a gift. It now hangs in my living room, where it seems to shift throughout the day as changing light moves across its surface.

Persephone's Table began in conversation with that painting, but its objects are drawn from things I have loved for years. Pomegranates are one of my favorite fruits, as much for their beauty as for the mythology they carry. Poppies remind me of a small front yard I once filled with them, where I would sit on the porch in summer reading and writing, watching their enormous ruffled petals move in the wind.

The title comes from the myth of Persephone, where the pomegranate becomes more than fruit: desire, consequence, passage, and a tether between two worlds. I have always been drawn to its contradictions, to something that can suggest abundance and loss, love and longing, temptation and the forbidden all at once.