Statement of the Artist

 

      Poetical Realism… This is what I try to develop and express through my artworks. The realistic representation of horses, humans and spaces is filtered through emotion and through my artistic view, aiming at a poetical result. I experiment with different techniques in watercolor by using, salt, tulle, lazes and pieces of fabric, investigating the expressive values of the color traces left on the surface. Sometimes a simple stroke is the beginning of all.  I love to let colors mix on their own, as they each time create a unique atmosphere that forms a setting. In the same way I work with oils, creating oppositions. The use of tulle leaves heavy points of color on the surface of the painting capturing light, in the same way that silence captures the traces of truth. And this contrasts with the several layers of lazes that flow, reflecting time. The light in my artworks, acts quite dramatically. It is of a metaphysic nature and it carries a deepest, spiritual meaning. I dip my brushes in my soul and I paint what I see…Reality is only a motive. Its poetical interpretation is what matters.

As a visual artist, I am quite influenced by drama and cinema and therefore, I visualize my paintings from a director’s point of view. For me, my canvas is a theatre scene and this is very obvious in my “Cosmogonical” paintings.  I act like a director when it comes to painting and like a visual artist when I direct a theater performance. This world fascinates me, and most of all, the poetical dialog between drama and visual arts. My research on the technique “Portrait within a portrait”, that was very profound in the artworks of my third solo show, “Place and Presence”, searches the traces of connection it has with the drama technique “play within a play”. Here, the viewer stares at the image of the portrait that is portrayed within the portrait, while the model observes the viewer. Here lies another dialog between reality and art and a great question about the procedure of identification.

I have also been influenced by the dramatic atmosphere of Giorgio De Chirico, and, regarding the portraiture, I have been inspired by the inner, secret light of Rebrandt, the shivering, lyrical perfection of Johannes Vermeer, the sensitive cruelty of Caravaggio, the poetical storms of Turner and the expressive, raging silence of George Rorris’ portraits.

Horses are my greatest my passion. I have been riding since my childhood and I believe that they reflect us, as humans, like mirrors. I have been dedicated in Equestrian Art since 2020, after I had quited painting for three years, as I was trying to find a new way to express myself through Art. I quitted horse riding too, that period and I started painting again, when I got back on the saddle. Having a contact with these great creatures, helped me find my inspiration on another level,  get back in touch with myself, my roots  and with the "roots of my soul".   That's  how I felt. That's why a gave this title to the first series of my equestrian artworks those depicted the wild horses of Anatolia, where my grandfather came from but his traces were lost after the persecution of Native Greeks by the Ottoman Turkish, under the command of Mustapha Kemal, between 1919-1923. Specifically, he came from from Kapadokya, a place that took its name from the Hittite word “Katpatuka,” which is commonly held to mean “Land of Beautiful Horses”.   So, horses, for me, have a very special meaning that connects me with my roots and take me close to the missing links between them. When I paint them, I am not interested in just "portreying" them, but trying to give the poetical essence of their beauty, that lies behind what we can see. 

My soul is thirsty for beauty… But in a way that my art translates it into poetry.  Not always in an easy way… I would say that my canvases are mirrors reflecting the unknown, that overflows from the crevices on the surface of reality’s face…And this is the setting of my paintings… The spiritual, sharp, fragile, haunted, lyrical beauty… The poetical one...