ART – Letters from Athens

Oil Painting

Seeing as my studio is also my kitchen, I had been confining myself to work on paper: pencil and ink drawings, charcoal, collage, mixed media, and aquarelle. Easy to store, easy to clean, and the food does not smell of turpentine.

This was not a hardship, since I love paper—its texture, feel and smell—and I am always on the lookout for different kinds: I especially like handmade paper made in India and Nepal. Regular readers are often bombarded with photos of my work.

However, I go to a local art workshop on Mondays, and our new teacher, a young artist named Josepha, has been encouraging us to try new things, including live model, printing and street art.

We are pretty free to choose what inspires us, and I have always had a yen to try my hand at portraits—difficult but interesting. This seemed to inspire everyone else, too, so Josepha had us doing the following exercise: using a photo of a person or of a painting, we had to paint in oil directly on paper, without a pencil drawing and without waiting for layers to dry.

My Renaissance gentleman does not look like the photo, but so what?

Then, we had to paint the same person four times, but in different colours, and a restricted palette (two colours, plus white and black if needed). Here is mine:

And here is my friend Nadine’s:

She remarked the first one (top left) looked depressed, so I told her the second looks like a crook, the third is Satan and the fourth (blue) a vampire! As you can see a lot of teasing goes on, interspersed by coffee breaks involving cookies and sometimes cake. As a bonus, we have a studio dog, Josepha’s spaniel Odin.

Fortified by these experiments—plus the jokes, the encouragement and the cookies—I am at the moment obsessed with portrait painting in oil and, you guessed it, my kitchen smells like turps.

I have always been fascinated by hands, so have tried to include them in my portraits. I also like figures of people reading.

There is more inspiration—and, hopefully, progress—in the pipeline, my aim being to go on to paint friends and family. Apparently one should not do that in the beginning, because one becomes obsessed with the likeness to the detriment of everything else. We shall see.

Peter Doig at The Courtauld

Peter Doig is an exciting artist—in fact, he is one of the most celebrated and important figurative painters working today. Born in Scotland in 1959, he moved with his family to Trinidad, then Canada, and later studied in London. In 2000 he was invited to return to Trinidad with his friend, artist Chris Ofili, and was so inspired he moved there permanently with his wife and children, until relocating recently to London.

His paintings focus on both landscapes and the human figure, melding them into evocative and often haunting compositions which are painterly and almost abstract. “I’m not trying to make paintings look like photos,” he has said of his process. “I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented.”

Painting on an Island. The setting is the prison island of Carrera, off the coast of Trinidad. Learning that some of the inmates were painters, Doig helped organise an annual exhibition of their work in Port of Spain.

I went to see his newest work, which is exhibited at The Courtauld in London. These are paintings that have evolved over a number of years, as he explores a rich variety of places, people, memories and ways of painting. Perhaps they are not his best work, but there is still that haunting quality, stark imagery and wonderfully strong palette to admire.

House of Music (Soca boat) Based on a photo of fishermen holding up their catch, Doig painted the men as musicians.

Their location at The Courtauld is also interesting because the permanent collection contains wonderful works that have been important inspiration for the artist, by artists such as Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro and Van Gogh. It was interesting to consider Doig’s contemporary works in the light of these masterpieces.

This painting was started in the Alps, but is inspired by Doig’s time in Canada

The Courtauld is also showcasing the artist’s work as a printmaker with a display that unveils for the first time a series of prints Doig made in response to the poetry of his friend and collaborator, the late Derek Walcott (1930-2017).

As a footnote, I will add that Doig’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, and the Goetz Collection in Munich, among others. In 2007, his painting White Canoe sold at Sotheby’s for $11.3 million, then an auction record for a living European artist.

The Morgan Stanley Exhibition at The Courtauld is on until May 29

Cement Dinosaurs

I have been occasionally coming to London since childhood but I have only just discovered, thanks to my niece who moved to the area, a weird and wonderful exhibit I had never even heard of before: the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.

These are Victorian cement statues representing extinct animals, which reside in the Crystal Palace Park. The sculptures are, due to the incomplete information available at the time, wildly inaccurate, which lends them an aura of fantasy and a sort of steampunk aesthetic, reinforced by natural erosion which has given them a crumbling patina.

The sculptures represent the first ever attempt anywhere in the world to model, from fossil remains, extinct animals as full-scale, three-dimensional, active creatures. Of the 30+ statues, only four represent dinosaurs in the strict, zoological sense of the word ( two Iguanodon, a Hylaeosaurus and a Megalosaurus). The statues also include plesiosaurs and icthyosaurs discovered by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, as well as pterodactyls, crocodilians, amphibians and mammals, such as a South American Megatherium (giant ground sloth) brought back to Britain by Charles Darwin on his voyage on HMS Beagle. And Irish Elk, which at the start bore actual fossil antlers.

This section of the park was landscaped by Joseph Paxton in 1853-1855 and the sculptures remained largely in the places we find them today. They were designed by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a natural history illustrator and sculptor of international reputation, whose work combined the pursuit of technical accuracy and animate expression.

Experts in the 1850s had different interpretations of what the animals really looked like. The story of these evolving interpretations demonstrates how scientific ideas evolve when new evidence comes to light. For example, some of the sculptures have four legs, whereas later fossil discoveries suggest these animals were bipeds.

The statues were commissioned in 1852 to adorn the Crystal Palace spectacular glasshouse after it was moved from Hyde Park at the end of the Great Exhibition. They were unveiled in 1854 when the park opened as a commercial amusement.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were fascinated by the dinosaur display in Crystal Palace, and they visited the site several times.

Hawkins set up a workshop on site at the park and built the models there. The dinosaurs were built full-size in clay, from which a mould was taken allowing cement sections to be cast. The larger sculptures are hollow with a brickwork interior.

The models were displayed on and around three islands, and given more realism by making the water level in the lake rise and fall, revealing different amounts of the animals. To mark the launch of the statues, Hawkins held a dinner on New Year’s Eve 1853 inside the mould of one of the Iguanodon models.

Engraving of the dinner. Must have been fascinating!

The statues are now Grade I listed and funding is being obtained to restore them before they crumble away completely. I only hope this is done sensibly, because their decrepitude adds to their charm. Some of the restoration done so far on a few makes them look a little fake.

I urge anyone within reach to visit—very original and definitely worth it.

The Swimmers

What do you do when you are parents, and your daughters want to embark on a perilous journey in order to have a future?

This is a film recommendation: The Swimmers tells a true story, of sisters Sara and Yusra Mardini, who were normal teenagers in Damascus, training to be professional swimmers. They left Syria because bombs started falling, and practically ‘swam’ to Greece.

This is the story of their journey; eventually Yusra fulfilled her ambition to swim at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics. As for Sara, her story is ongoing—but I will leave you to discover it for yourselves.

I had followed the sisters’ saga via The Worldwide Tribe Instagram feed and Podcasts. You can listen to an interview with Sara, here.(highly recommended)

Often biopics can ring false, striving for a heroic bias, but I found this well done, and the actors are excellent. The two are played by real life sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa, which gets the sibling chemistry across really well. The film has its flaws, depending on different points of view—for example, it annoyed some people that the actors spoke mostly in English instead of Arabic—but I thought it gave a good insight into the wider humanitarian crisis facing migrants, and what it means to be labelled a refugee.

It is also a story of family, determination, guts, human frailty—and never giving up on your dreams.

Here is a trailer.

Footnote: See what you think about the traffickers—they are the villains in this story.

Inktober is over!

Every year I find it fun to participate in the Inktober challenge, where for the whole month of October artists post ink drawings onto their Instagram feeds. There is a list of prompts to follow each day, but of course none of this is obligatory—it is a fun thing, no prizes to be had. (See My Inktober 2019 here.)

I never follow the prompts, unless some inspire me along the way, and usually I do not manage to post every day. This year, though, I challenged myself—I would post a series of drawings, one every single day.

I chose to draw on A5-size paper, so I bought a pile of handmade cotton sheets, quite thick, ivory-colored and with deckled edges. I drew in ink and added gold, silver or copper leaf.

The drawings were for sale, and the first person to comment got the day’s drawing. Most sold, and the rest will do very well for Christmas presents!

Most importantly, I really enjoyed the challenge, and am proud of myself for managing to get to the end, despite work and travel that happened this month.

Also, practice makes perfect, and my control of the medium employed and my hand-and-eye coordination in drawing improved by the day.

As you can see, most drawings are of animals or birds—but I did have some trees, a thistle, a pineapple and a Haloween pumpkin!
If you want to see the lot, my Instagram handle is @athensletters

An old tobacco factory

I am aware I have been absent for a while, the summer has been unusually busy and I lacked inspiration. However, I did manage to take in a few exhibitions, and I will now regale you with some art—beats news of wars, wildfires, hurricanes and funerals, which I’m sure everyone has had enough of.

I’m always on the lookout for new exhibitions curated by NEON, a nonprofit organization that works to bring contemporary culture closer to the public. In the past they have put on many interesting shows, in locations that one rarely gets to visit. I have written about them before. (here, and here.)

The exhibitions are usually excellent, so I went to their latest one, in an old tobacco factory in downtown Athens.

The Greek Public Tobacco Factory, in the area of Kolonos, was the second public tobacco factory in Athens. It was built by the Greek State at the time when the cigarette manufacturing industry was booming. The idea was to house the tobacco processing and packaging companies as well as the tobacco traders’ warehouses with the main purpose of fully controlling tobacco taxation. In its heyday it employed around 3000 workers, and included a customs office, a restaurant for the employees, as well as a house for the guardian of the building.

Today, the old building has been entirely renovated by NEON, who financed the work and gifted it back to the state for public use, as a permanent cultural and social space, while a significant portion is currently occupied by the Hellenic Parliament’s Library and Printing House.

The building itself was interesting, painted on the outside cheerful red and yellow ochre, with a large courtyard paved with flagstones.

However, the art was, in my opinion, underwhelming. The exhibition was entitled ‘Dream On,’ because ‘Large-scale intallations is where artists go when they want to make their dreams come true.’

Of course art is subjective, and I do like contemporary art, including installations, but the ones in this exhibition mostly left me cold.

A car spilling its guts out in the courtyard.

By John Bock, it is described as ‘the surreal combination of an American vintage car giving birth to a mutated octopus (or squid).’

A Credit Card Destroying Machine, by Michael Landy. This had various complicated meanings which I find too boring to allude to (referring to ‘the death knell of the consumerist society’), but delighted the six-year-old who accompanied us. I suppose it is pretty cool, in a funfair kind of way. The visitor is required to sacrifice a valid credit card—this went through a mechanism that produced an abstract drawing.

A car, covered in pine needles, by Martha Dimitropoulou, who has ‘reconstructed that paragon of consumer culture, the Mercedes-Benz, into a different life.’

These are called Piss Flowers, by Helen Chadwick

However, there is always something to like, and in my case it was the drawings of a wave, by Alexandros Psychoulis—studies for an installation using plastic cord.

I thought the result was very interesting—of course in my personal opinion.

Party time!

Word press has lately informed me of my 7th blogging anniversary. Who would have thought the years would go by so fast? (At least in blogging terms…) Of course I knew it was seven years, because I started the blog during the big—and continuing—crisis we had in Greece in 2015. New readers can read all about it in this post. And some of the following ones.

June 2015: my friends from abroad kept calling to find out what was happening, we were spending a horrible summer stuck in front of the TV. I thought, rather than keep repeating things to each one, I would try and put it down in writing. After a while, I decided I did not always want to talk about the bad news and difficulties, I also wanted to present the ‘good’ side of Greece—seeing as we were being stigmatised in the press, branded as a nation of feckless tax evaders, and worse.

Although we obviously were not without fault, it has since become apparent to many people that Greece got the short end of the stick, and a whole nation was made to suffer, and is still suffering, because of the usual misguided political and economic schemes and interests of more powerful countries.

I have been, since university, very pro Europe, but I confess I have been sadly disappointed. How a bunch of highly qualified (supposedly) and highly paid (by the taxpayer) people managed to make such a mess of things, beats me. And they are still doing it—viz their handling of the refugee situation.

Despite all this, I still feel a united Europe is a good thing, in order to pull its weight with the huge empires that are the USA, China and Russia.

To come back to the blog, it will not have escaped the notice of older readers that I have been writing less often of late. Well, I lead a very busy life, shared between Greece and France, since we have had to make big changes due to the above-mentioned crisis. So, my days are full: and, besides work, I have been doing a lot of drawing and painting, as most of you know—and writing, about which you don’t, since I never put any of it on the blog. I also volunteer for two refugee organisations in Greece, which I have not talked about yet—but maybe I will in future, since it has been a most interesting, although often heartbreaking, challenge.

Therefore the blog has taken a back seat, and not only because of the above. The fact is, I have not been feeling very inspired: the situation, both in Greece and worldwide, is depressing, and who wants to hear any more about it? We read enough in the papers. Art is a solace, but I am wary of overload.

I admit there are days when I have thought of giving up the blog, but what keeps me going is you guys, my dear readers and bloggy friends. Over those seven years there are people who have stuck with me through thick and thin (Yes, you, Pete, Goeff, Jennie, Franklin, Anne, Derrick, Bruce, Deborah, Ellen, Eha, Bea, Mick, Sue, Jacqui, Anne, Kate, Tialys, Mona, Jack, Willowdot, Mariella, Pamela—and countless others). I could not bear to lose touch with you, or stop following your own blogs and exchanging remarks and comments. Also here I must mention the few who have, in the course of those years, sadly left us—I think of them often.

So thanks, everyone, keep checking in, and let me know if there are things you particular want me to write about. In return, and since this is, after all, an anniversary, I offer you cake!

Tuscan painting trip

An old friend whose husband is Italian organised a painting trip at their house in Tuscany and I got an invitation which I could not, as one can imagine, refuse. The house is on remote hillside near Pisa, with fantastic views over the surrounding countryside. This was still mostly green, with patches of yellow slashed by the dark green spears of cypress trees. The weather was brilliant throughout.

The painting experience was spread over two weeks, in order to accommodate all aspiring artist friends, and sadly on the days I was there, the artist who was to teach us was absent—leaving me in the position of being the most experienced guest.

However, while I did not get the opportunity to learn from someone else as I had hoped to do, it was so much fun to paint—and eat—with others in such beautiful surroundings that I really could not complain.

One day we took the opportunity to drive to Florence, where we went around the Palazzo Pitti. I had visited this museum years ago and I can report that nothing has been done to it since. With the new style of curating now prevalent, I found it extremely old fashioned. Rows and rows of dark paintings of the Virgin Mary against a wallpaper of dark red stripes. More rows of Allegories in the next room. Rows of portraits of unattractive people. Heavy frames with the names of the artists on tiny bronze plaques—I had to lean right in to be able to read them and, every time I did so, I set off the alarm!

However, the views from the windows were stunning.

Florence rooftops seen from the Palazzo Pitti windows

We went through a multitude of rooms, one after the other, badly lit and even more badly ventilated, which tired me out and made it hard to seek out the treasures—for, of course, the Palazzo Pitti is full of treasures-

-such as frescoes to die for around the ceilings, and, above all, the incomparable Titians.

After lunch in a small tratoria hidden away in a side street, we walked in the Bardini Gardens.

And I cannot finish this post without a mention of the food—Italian food being, to my taste, the pinnacle of deliciousness.

In Dublin’s fair city

Dublin is a lovely city. On a recent short trip I walked around the Merrion Square park, which was full of wonderful spring flowers. A cheeky sculpture of Oscar Wilde sits atop a large rock.

Oscar Wilde Memorial (1997) by Danny Osborne

Luckily I had time to visit the National Gallery, but only the ground floor—still, there was some beautiful art to be seen.

Here’s a few highlights:

Large panels by Hughie O’Donoghue

This monumental work is called Original Sins, and was presented as part of the the National Gallery’s contribution to the Decade of Centenaries. It comprises six large panels in mixed media (paint, photo trace, industrial tarpaulin), which the artist likes to compare to tapestry.

I found a detail of this portrait of Sir Charles Kemeys-Tynte by Thomas Frye fascinating: namely the powder which has fallen from his wig onto the shoulders of his coat.

The Opening of the Sixth Seal, by Francis Danby, looks like a scene from The Lord of the Rings!

I put the photos of the wonderful stained glass works by Evie Hone and Michael Healy RHA into a previous post

Finally, an absolutely stunning sculpture by young artist Joseph Walsh. It was made from olive ash, and even from close, the seams in the wood were invisible. You can tell the scale of it by the person standing beside it. I would love to visit hos studio and see how he does it—he also makes furniture.

The park was full of tulips

Happy Easter

For Easter, let me share images of lovely stained glass panels seen in the National Gallery in Dublin (more about this in a future post). They will put you in the right mood.

This is a detail from the work below, by Michael Healy RHA (Dublin, 1873-1941)

The works below are by Evie Hone (Dublin 1894-1955)

So modern for her time.

The work above is titled Resurrection, so very apt for Easter.

Greek Easter is next week, but this post is for all of you, whatever your beliefs or geographical location.

Happy Easter!