1 ‘Rooftop: Sunrise towards Kesariani

      acrylic on canvas 110 x 55cms

This was painted  ‘au pleinaire’ at 6.00am, which meant returning daily at the same time for over a week.  That moment, lasting around 3 minutes, as the sun bursts over the skyline creates such an intensity of light it reflects off the large glass windows of my apartment before bouncing back powerfully enough to reflect from a dull concrete wall opposite and shimmer through the Hera Hotel windows next door. There is an apartment block to the right of this picture, with huge plate glass windows.  At night the people who live there keep their lights on and curtains open. Everything happens in those apartments, nudity is the least of it.   Greeks are happy to be seen, there is no embarrassment.  I think they would be offended if we didn’t pay attention.

 

2 ‘Now is the Winter’

     acrylic and oil on canvas 110 x 55cms

It is January 2013. Every day brings a further austerity measure. A new type of beggar appears on the streets. Some, like this man, are well dressed. A man who simply can’t pay his bills anymore. His sign reads ‘Voyithise me’ (help me), the Parthenon behind is in ruins. This part of Monastiraki is more like an Eastern Bazaar, a daily flea market surrounded by old houses and shops dating from the first Asia Minor expulsions. The early morning light softens the heads of traders and shoppers. They wander about, sheep-like and unseeing, among the cheap socks and old coins, while the economy teeters on the edge of disaster.  Even the morning light is bilious.

 3  ‘The Sacred Rock (O Vlachos)’

       acrylic and oil on canvas  110 x 55cms

Every Sunday in winter the Acropolis has free entry for Athenians. It is a favourite place to walk and meet before your late afternoon taverna lunch with the Family. I am always amazed by the indifference shown by locals to monuments like the Propylaea and Temple of Athena Nike. At the Rock’s highest point, as if floating in air, the Parthenon sits majestically. Ignored by everyone.In this painting, I have pushed the Parthenon into the background as the walkers do. They meander happily under a sky full of imminent snow talking on cell phones, gossiping with their pareas. It is early 2012  and Brussels is still deliberating on The Greek Question.

 

4  ‘The Old Man, his Dog and a Puddle’

  oil on canvas 110 x 55cms

 A tiny backstreet in central Athens: an old man in a chair his grandfather probably sat on when the street was still part of a village, and a street dog. These images are utterly parochial, Greek and timeless. Yet this street is close to Ermou, a major thoroughfare that connects Syntagma to the city’s industrial centre. In midday, the autumn sun creates short but extreme shadows and I loved the intensity of colour despite the shadowed midday light. And by the way they both stared at me with the same expression – the normal Greek suspicion of strangers. Meanwhile, among the young and disaffected, this traditional wariness of the foreigner is hardening into active racism.

 

5 ‘Kryssi Avgi (The Golden Dawn)’

     oil on canvas 110 x 55cms

 One of the saddest and most frightening effects of the recent crisis has been the rise of a neo-facist movement, Kryssi Afgi. Disaffected, politically ignorant young men take their message of hate into the schools and openly enact violence against immigrants. Far worse is the lack of community or political will to deal with them. This little Church in Monastiraki has been graffitied  with their slogans, unheeded. Athenians, absorbed by their own affairs, rarely react to their environment unless it directly impinges on their own life. So, two years later,  the Church remains desecrated.

 

6  ‘Rooftop Parthenon – Veikou St’ 

      acrylic on canvas 110 x 55cms

The Acropolis touches my heart in many different ways. This view is one I have painted many times, in every time of day and season. In early morning light, the columns are the colour of pearls, by midday they pulse with ochre and lavender shadows and by evening they radiate gold and scarlet, as if lit from within. Summer sunset is one of my favourite times. The midday heat has died down, and a rich palette of colours radiates from the grey apartment blocks. It is hard to exaggerate these colours and even harder to capture them. They change so rapidly.

 

 7  ‘Rooftop Parthenon – Avyssineon’

      acrylic on canvas 110 x 55cms

This was painted ‘au pleinair’ from a building in Monastiraki. I wanted this particular aspect of the Parthenon at this particular time of day. The sun catches only the classical and neo-classical buildings, separating them from other historical periods. As layers of sediment date human activity, so this image illustrates the history of the city. Modern Athens is depicted at the bottom of the painting, a gloomy, fearful huddle. Rising above the apartment blocks are the gracious neo-classical houses lit by optimism as the Athenians reclaimed their city from the Ottomans. Higher again, shrouded in shadows, are the simple, cave-like early houses from the Middle Ages. Then, separate and alone - rises the glorious Acropolis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8 ‘A Windy Sunday’

 acrylic and oil on canvas 80 x 70cms

The happy combination of heat, wind, sun and sea and your family! And in Athens its free, the city is ringed with perfect sandy beaches. The crisis may have taken away most peoples cash flow, but it has robbed very few of their ability to enjoy themselves.  With ‘Windy Sunday’ I couldn’t believe the extreme colour change the sun causes. Under the umbrella skin looked almost black, shadows deepen to charcoal and forest green. In the sun, skin bleaches to a bone white, like the sand.

 

 

 

 

9 ‘The Street Kaffineion’

acrylic on canvas 80 x 75cms

 I buy vegetables at the Athenas St markets. These three old friends are always on the corner of Evripidou St when I pass by.  People tell me that 20 years ago there were impromptu café tables on the main roads throughout Athens. So these gentlemen are part of an older Athenian tradition. I love the relaxed way they sit together and almost curve towards each other. The dark backstreet colours are silhouetted by the sharp winter sun. Graffiti and decorative carved doors sit side by side. Everything and everyone in this picture belong together.

 

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11  Three Friends on Syngrou Fix’

acrylic on canvas 80 x 70cms

I was eating at a table near these three friends, sketching. For over an hour they talked intensely together, or to someone else on a phone, always returning to the original  conversation. No pausing, no loss of attention, utterly absorbed.  I was too far to hear if they were talking about Russian literature or fish soup recipes and it didn’t matter. They were communicating. There is something very Greek about this group, modern, Athens 2000s –Greek. They talk intently, passionately while smoking with total committment. As a result they are unaware of anything going on around them. Perhaps that is why the whole nation has suffered from political amnesia.  While I sat sketching (which no one noticed) a car back-fired. I dropped my pencil in fright. They didn’t skip a beat.

 

 

 

12 ‘The Orange Skirt’

oil on canvas 80 x 70cms

 Romany gypsies are a permanent feature of European city life. The children busk, the men collect scrap metal and many teenage boys and girls pickpocket on the metro. The mothers and grandmothers, however, are rarely seen except at the markets shopping or carrying heavy bags around. I have a theory that it is the women who struggle to keep a normal family life going in the makeshift cardboard camps of Zefiri. I picture them cooking, sewing old clothes, maybe drinking wine. These ladies, taking a rest on a wall on the pedestrian walkway around the Acropolis, looked like a composition by Ingres. I had to paint them, particularly the orange skirt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE STREET KAFINEION

 acrylic on canvas       85cm x 70cm

Inpromptu cafe's spring up in any street at any time. This group of coffee drinkers have been in their Monastiraki  backstreet every morning when I pick up fresh vegetables from the Athinean markets. As I usually visit around 8.30am, the sharp morning light creates intense shadows and patterns on the already graffitied and textured walls around them.s

 

WHAT SHALL I SAY?

acrylic on canvas      75cms  x 85 cms

The phone is a third person in any Parea, the person on the other line is handed around, their words repeated to the Parea and in every sense they are an active member of the group, even if they are in Berlin at the time.

I eavesdropped this conversation, it was impossible not to, and the two girls were conducting a war with a third whose insults were carefully passed on, and they debated their response, presumably with her listening. So focussed were they on articulating their sense of injustice, I was able to sketch unoticed for half an hour.