GREECE OF MY DREAMS

Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, 1996

(Private collection, Athens, Greece)

This painting was commissioned as a gift for the President of Tupperware in Athens and was conceived and painted three years before the artist had a chance to visit Greece for the first time.  Therefore, the majority of the elements in the composition were sketched on the basis of films, books, and photographs of Greek port towns and the famous Meteora.  The architectural elements were combined in the painting with Greek shop names and with representations of human figures and things which immediately bring to mind Greek life; thus, we see calamari drying on a line, a pelican, roofs of the houses turned into observation decks or restaurants, a Greek priest, a bouzouki player and a woman and a man dancing, waiters serving guests in a restaurant, Greek women gathering around a display of Tupperware, various types of boats, a Greek windmill, monasteries on tops of rocks, and many similar things, creating the overall Greek atmosphere.  The painting even has a Greek title, Η Ελλάδα των ονειρών μου (Greece of My Dreams), reflecting, like all the inscriptions in the painting, the artist's advances in studies of the modern Greek language. 

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