The artist’s monologue

My paintings project autobiographic elements and childhood memories.

The memory of my father’s village is accompanied with the feelings I shared with him during our summer walks outside the village. A sweet nostalgia holds me when I remember these. I long to touch that earth, as I long to hold my father’s hand again. Although I was a city child, this contact with nature, made me feel free, better, purer, closer to God...

I refer to these details of my life because they, to a great degree, define me as an artist. Most of my topics are from the everyday life of my ancestors from Pontos, who, the more I get older, the more imperatively they ask to be depicted on my canvas.

The places where an artist has lived, are inevitably included in their work. For every journey in the outside world, there is an equivalent one taken in our soul, in constant structure and interaction with our previous ones. Thus, the artist, all their life, creates a whole body of work which evolves together with the different, particular pieces of work. The artist’s evolution, is, in reality, a journey within, towards the inborn elements, the roots, the home of the soul, the childhood. There, we meet with the simple and the real, with the authentic surprise and happiness. There we find the answers to the how and why of our existence and we soothe our agonies of life. Thus, our work is justified. In my belief, this is the quest of the artist, as expressed throughout the artistic creations.

Isn’t art an act of dream realization?

Lia Eleftheriadou