These images all began as my photograph of a flower. The final portraits retain clear photographic detail, yet they also look as if they have been touched by the hand of a watercolorist.
When I am creating, I might begin with a story in mind, or a story develops out of the work. This is my story about Persephone and her Studio.
In my fantasy, these images were created by the Greek goddess, Persephone. Persephone's story is that after being abducted to the underworld by Hades, she becomes destined to spend her whole life there. Eventually, she is allowed to spend half of the year on the earth and the other half in the underworld. Persephone's annual return to earth is in the springtime, marked by the joyous new flowering of plants and blossoms. Her return to the underworld is marked by winter's darkness, the death of plants and the halting of growth.
Each winter, as she bides her time in the underworld, I think Persephone creates these botanical portraits. Countering the dark preoccupations of the underworld, each day she goes to her studio to retain contact with life and color by painting her new spring creations. The flowers begin as white-petaled canvases and each season she paints them anew.
Persephone paints with joy, with abandon, perhaps a little messily as her watercolors fall upon the white petals of her blank botanical prototypes. She brings this light into her darkness, then brings her lovely creations to share with us all in the spring.
© Stephanie Hamilton-Oravetz Photography