I am changing. Growing. As an artist and as a person. This means that I am integrating and using the past as fertile soil for a happier life. In my artistic practice this translates into an organic approach to creation, less focused on a specific outcome. I let my artworks mature and grow too, which basically means that I give them more time than ever before. Still, I want my materials to be approachable and relatable, my process sustainable, able to be executed anywhere, anytime. Sicily demonstrates exactly this mindset. It is the outcome of a very strange, intense trip, and it incorporates elements of a personal journey, a greater cultural kinship, mirroring memories from across the sea (being Greek, Sicily bears for me a special weight) and an account of people's desires and often futile efforts against increasingly alienating environments. In my mind the piece has both melancholy and hopeful notes, peace but not resignation.
The public phone booth, where generations have spent hours and small fortunes talking to friends, family and lovers, where tears were shed and laughter echoed, seems to be a curiosity of the past, a ghosted presence in the urban landscape. One of my plans for the future is to re-imagine the phone booth. For now, I present here the best example of a public phone booth's organic role for (and inevitably its integration into) lively subcultures.
Lipstick (acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 40x30) is the first in a series of paintings that question our dependence on objects for validation, attraction, confidence and gender identification. The object is larger than life, because larger than life is the space it occupies in our lives, and the text balances between existential threat and singalong lightness.