Hallmarks of Cancer

In an attempt to shift through the Kandinsky style which involved carved geometries intertwined in an airstream-like fond, I decided to evolve my strategy in order to depict more unnatural linking of the geometric shapes together bound and routinely encountered in this particular style. As a result in this painting, triangular ladder formations that are two-dimensional seem to split a room, where on the left side a black and white, night and day contrast is framed while on the right side, a yellow brown or noon contrast is generated.

Still Exploring the Kandisky Style???

This is the continuation of a series of works with two dimensional perspective, attempting to borrow elements from the Kandinsky School of painting, readjusting geometric shapes in configurations that balance themselves in the eye.

This particular one is not named yet, for I intend to complete the series before naming all paintings, in an a posteriori mode.

Many friends are telling me they see a rooster, a clock, a moon and a bridge in here. :)

Exploring Kandinsky Through Watercolor Painting

This is the beginning of a new style of drawing through watercolors; the project is described as "exploring Kandinsky through watercolor painting". One of my initial attempts to capture geometric shapes without any profound meaning in a harmonic concept by placing them the one in close proximity to the other. As Kandinsky has been drawing in one of his later periods, exploring the effect of straight lines, curvy lines, triangles, spheres, hemispheres, rectangles and other geometric and non-geometric two-dimensional entities, to the human eye, I tried to develop my own technique in a relevant way. Obviously, mimicking this great artist, what we may see is the depiction of an alternative ego and personal signature.

This painting is not yet entitled, for I am waiting a series of them to be completed and then provide titles to all. There is a nice thought, as well, behind this series, to write a small poem for each one of the works that will describe a non-subjective point of reference, after completing the painting and simply observing it.

Dream Complex

This is a watercolor painting, completed in Toronto during winter of 2010-2011 and is termed as "dream complex". Being illustrated through dark-pale green and blue, this painting is characterized by a pessimistic cliche background, most probably oriented in a waterworld environment. I wasted lots of colors to achieve such dark and color-rich areas at the level of the horizon, since watercolor is generally less condense.

The cave depicted on the right has been described as also demonstrating and illustrating an alive entity, with the upper tunnels as "eyes" and the lower bigger tunnel entrance as "mouth". The two figures on the left seem to even be erotically intertwined or fighting for dominance to each other.

I was quite skeptical and tortured by certain things, when I drew this.

This painting has been incorporated in the series "the mote in mother's eye".

River from "The Mote in Mother's Eye"

This is one of the pretty much early works of mine, belonging to a larger series of works called "The Mote in Mother's Eye". In contrast to the series "Monsters and Constructions" which included paintings with alien objects that were well-circumscribed, this series has works that depict a surrealistic and abstract view of nature in a more free form.

Still, I always like giving a fake representation even to real concepts like mountains, cliffs and rivers, as shown here. If for example someone notices the sky, he will immediately realize that I used very strange colors that they are absent from realism-paintings that the sky is drawn. Also, it is evident sometimes that colors within the sky change very drastically, without a smooth gradient applied there, giving the impression that the sky is not real but there is a canvas behind the mountain.

Another deliberate misconception applied in this painting is the disorientation of the theoretical light source. If someone notices the small cliffs on both sides of the river, the lighter brown on the left side of the mountain, as well as, the lighter sky colors on the left side of the painting, he/she could easily tell that the sun is probably on the left side of the paintingthrowing light over these objects from a big angle (around 60-70 degrees). However, the beams of light seem to have obtained a totally different direction, as well as being hidden behind smog, as shown in the upper right corner of the sky.

The work is entitled "river" and is the first of this series.

This is my truth, what's yours?

A totally abstract work. It was one of the first paintings, in which I avoided creating a gradient in soil or sky. Compared to others, it can be noticed that there is no such thing as exterior or interior landscape, but only geometric abstract objects or subjects.

People throughout, have interpreted the title of this work by the "man" on the top left corner being the surrealistic perspective of pinnocchio (whose nose is long due to the lies).

Another interesting interpretation is that the white-board, represents someone's life and all the experiences are written thereon, surviving in the test of time... All surrounding objects and subjects represent the daily experiences that contribute to our motives and actions.

They are both interesting interpretations.

Bereaucracy

This is another work belonging to the series "Monsters and Constructions".

I came up with this idea, while waiting in an endless queue of people, as a student to receive some confirmation documents in a public agency in Greece.

In terms of technique, this was my first work in which I tried to create a sky gradient using three different colors instead of one conventional one (like blue or yellow sky as before). In this attempt, one can notice several mistakes on the painting, but it eventually got accepted by me (and others later on)!

After all, when it comes to mistakes, we are confident that they belong to us!

Rational Discrimination

One of my early works, also belonging to the "Monsters and Constructions" series.

I initially named this painting "Three Random Encounters and Two Random Birds", but I decided to eventually name it "Rational Discrimination".

This was a small attempt to create a sunset gradient for the sky.

Our House

One of my very early works called "Our House", being included in my first painting series named "Monsters and Constructions". At that point (and even now) I was greatly influenced by surreal artist Yves Tanguy, so I put myself into painting what was described as "alien creations and objects randomly placed in distinct and deserted landscapes". These objects seemed to have no meaning or hidden message, but came as an automatic schematic representation of thoughts and emotions of the given time.

To date, many people have been trying to match the title of this work with what they actually see... and they came up with the conclusion that this gargantuan white structure represents actually our very first house; our common house; the one that brought us to this planet; to this earth. This is a very very touching point of view for this work, indeed. Thank you for this colorful and meaningful interpretation to all of you!

I am astoundingly fond of such interpretations!

There Is Not!

"There is not!" represents my first attempt into watercolor painting; although it is rather simplistic, I like it very much and it is true that it has drawn quite much attention to the people. When I came up with the idea behind "There is not!", I wished to test the watercolor techniques in making different layers with the colors; thus I wanted to only draw the gradient in a sky and in a soil and nothing more. Then I thought to put two columns on it and some shadows....

The idea behind "There is not!" doesn't have any controversy as yet; many people tell me that it's impossible for the shadows to exist unless the true objects exist... since the wheel does not exist, then the gigantic monster doesn't necessarily exist. We do tend to create shadows; from our lives, from our pasts, from our futures; and usually these are very dark-scary and monstrous shadows.

This is the first of a series of works that are included in a collection named: "Monsters and Constructions"