I have been constantly painting for years now the masses of the littoral rocks of the Aegean sea either with oil or with watercolors on my summer diaries. My latest works focus on the texture and composition of the rocks. They include a first unit with oil paintings created outdoors, in the islands of Tinos and Syros. The second unit includes works created in the studio with pencils, assisted by photography and lens. They are cliffs in northern Syros, where one recognizes primordial forms, reflecting ancient sea gods and daemons: Poseidon with the Naiades, Aphrodite emerging from the sea, Triton, Proteus, Persephone…
Painting these rocks I often feel like doing the work of a naturalist as I write down the constitution and blending of minerals. The observation of nature’s secrets fascinates, just like the discovery of architecture and geometry in the wings of a butterfly or in the structure of the littoral masses and of their shale minerals. We may recognize the manganese, the blue-green serpentinite, the limestone veins …
