Love it. The most intractable, sometimes treacherous medium there is. With watercolours if you make a mess, odds are is that is a charming little mess: With oils - it's just a mess, start again. But if you get some kind of grip on it, it is the richest, most satisfying medium there is. At times, while using it, you may get a glimpse into why it reigned supreme in the West as the most potent form of putting colour images out there for about 500 years. I am no master, but it's fun, I try.
The Perils and Pitfalls of Polite Conversation
Very much a 'work in progress.' I'll probably never finish it. 'Inspired' by a particularly bad date, one dark and stormy night, in Heraklio, Crete.
Oil on canvas. 83 x 51 cm
Kafenio, Heraklio. 2001
I painted this in memory of a lovely traditional old cafenio on Kalokairino street. It had been there forever. It got gutted, and now it's a shop that sells sport shoes.
Oil on wood. 67x94cm
The Drunk
There is a lot of the graphic in my work, and this is a kind of head-nod towards Hogarth, Spitzweg - those guys. I should also mention the early, great days of Mad Magazine. Wally Wood, Bill Elder - not subtle, heavy, blocky colours and shapes. Fun to paint. It was a gag a friend and I came up with - a guy comes home, dead drunk, puts his clothes on the bed and himself on the coat-rack. (My friend and I have a not very sophisticated sense of humour.)
Oil on canvas, 27 x 34 cm.
The Alchemists.
I've always had a thing for Mad Scientists - it is one of those achetypes that appeals. So, here are a bunch of wannabe Prosperos and Fausts, horsing around in the ol' Mancave.
Oil on canvas, 71 x 97 cm.
The Players
Oil on canvas. 20 x 28 cm
TNT play the station.
Local trio Tchi Na Tcho (TNT) playing their brand of Gypsy Folk Jazz at the Fribourg station on a rainy day.
Oil on canvas, 77 x 56 cm
