Demeter looking for Persephone 

Persephone is the daughter of the goddess Demeter, which is responsible for the growth and bloom of the earth, and the supreme god Zeus. As a young girl, Persephone is picking flowers in a meadow, when suddenly the earth breaks open and Hades, the brother of Zeus and the god of the underworld, appears in a chariot with a group of horses and abducts her to his realm of the dead. Demeter doesn't know what's going on. She is looking for her daughter all over the earth, neglecting earth and her growth and bloom in the meantime. Eventually, she learns the truth and asks Zeus to intervene. It ends in a compromise in which Persephone stays with Hades for six months and with her mother for the next six months. When her daughter is in Hades empire, Demeter neglects the earth, which withers until the girl returns. This is how Greek mythology explains the origin of the seasons. 

Unreliable fathers, Persephone knows about it, just like Iphigenia about Agamemnon. 

 






Acryl on canvas, 2024
160 x 120 cm
(Detail)

Thetis 

Thetis is a Nereid, a sea nymph, daughter of Nereus and Doris. She was the lover of Zeus and Poseidon. When a prophecy became known that a son of Thetis would become more powerful than his father, the two mighty gods hastened to find a husband for Thetis. That was Peleus, king of Thessaly and the Myrmidons. All the gods and goddesses were invited to the wedding, except Eris, the goddess of strife. She came by anyway and threw a golden apple under the guests with the inscription: "For the most beautiful". Hera, Aphrodite and Pallas Athena immediately put themselves forward as candidates. Zeus didn't want to burn his fingers on it, especially since his wife Hera was also among the candidates. He knew, however, a young shepherd named Paris. He was given the assignment to make a choice, in which he was put under a lot of pressure by the three contenders. He yielded to Aphrodite, who offered him the promise of marriage to the most beautiful woman on earth as a bribe. That was Helen at the time, with the slight handicap that she was already married to Menelaus, the king of Sparta. There was a lot of trouble, in this case the war for Troy, because that Paris turned out to be a Trojan king's son who simply kidnapped Helen. 

The son Thetis had from her marriage to Peleus was Achilles. Because of her marriage to a mortal man, that child was also mortal. To protect the newborn baby as much as possible, she plunged him into the River Styx, the border river between earth and Hades, which would make him invulnerable. Well, except for his heel, after all, she had to hold the child somewhere. As fate would have it, Achilles was finally mortally wounded in his "Achilles' heel" at the siege of Troy by a poisoned arrow, shot by Paris, but guided to the target by the god Apollo who had sided with the Trojans and who had inside knowledge about this weakness of the Greek hero. 

Acryl on canvas (detail), 2024 

160 x 120 cm