GEORGE SFOUGARAS ARTWORKS

ABSTRACT SURFACES I have always felt ambivalent about abstract art, so this offering is in a way of appeasement.  Not quite abstract perhaps, looking at foliage and cell structures, but all the same much less representational than usual. Some time ago, I was asked to create some abstract images for friends, to complement their apartment decor/architecture. I am not sure how pleased they were with them, but I did somehow feel like it was a chore, or something that took me away from struggling to create representational art. I do not feel that way anymore and I can see in me an emergence of a love for harmonious compositions and balance in images which no longer rest solely on figurative references. The following are designs for possible fabric prints.

Magic I grew up with many layers of meaning around me. Talismen, votive offerings, religion and icons...old spells and traditions....cures, exorcisms, mystery. What do young people have today? Where is the complexity and the depth/layers that makes us frame our lives in different ways, helps us to look for answers in different places? Has the internet replaced those things too?  When I was growing up, if I had a question, one of many people that would be on hand to answer it ( as long as I was prepared to ask it of course). I am not objecting to the huge knowledge base at our disposal; it is just that it feels as if young people have one great big impersonal place to look. It seems to me that the internet has demystified things a little too much.  What need is there for passing on information, when everything can be found on line? This series of works attempts to look beyond the surface at the complexity of cultural transmission. I wanted to capture something ...

'THE SAN PEOPLE' I have always been intrigued by communities that have survived without the changes that 'progress' has inflicted upon us all. The San and some indigenous groups are fascinating examples of hunter-gatherer cultures. I  have attempted to sketch some simple images over the course of one day, but...they were hard won. I did dozens before I could settle on a few I felt had something to offer. Here are today's efforts, hopefully to be developed into a printing project at some point. I simply numbered them 1-7. I love the simplicity of no4.  The title of the album that contains them is 'Emergence' because I wanted the figures to 'emerge' from the dessert, like ghostly presences.  However, I became disillusioned with the slightly out-of-focus feel ( I kept sketch 2 as an example) and decided to increase the contrast and definition. I have used painter, photoshop elements and pic sketch apps over physical pastel drawings. Thank you for the ...

THE CRIMINAL MIND OF DR MORIARTY This came about because a tree was blown down, and I inherited some of the timber. It was an oak tree, around 130 years old, according to my estimations...but I stand to be corrected. It was a very hard block to carve, and as ever the timing happened to be in autumn-winter time, so that the carving of it was a cold and uncomfortable experience.  I carved the main parts with an axe ( I remember watching a Nigerian sculptor using an axe in 1983 and marvelling at the way it was been held, but to be honest, I have  no real recollection of the work being done at that time, only the man himself, a wonderful all-embracing warm human being.  I hope he is well.  Years later, I briefly became friendly with another great carver/sculptor..Bill Ming.  He did some amazing work.  So it was within me all that time, the need and the wish to carve something substantial out of wood.  It had been a reasonable effort, when, someth...

FULL CIRCLE This started life as a simple turn around hand operated sculpture made from old wood pieces found strewn around my old classroom and courtesy of my dear friend Rob Jelves...God rest his soul.  'Full Circle', the title refers to the way we sometimes ( very often in fact return to what really matters). And here it is in action.....

CURIOCITIES I have been furiously de-cluttering in an effort to free up space and unblock the way to new adventures.  It was in this spirit that I was rummaging through the loft and the  shed for things that no longer served a useful purpose. During this process, I unearthed some lost memories as well as objects, notably a series of wood and mixed media works.   The constructions or toys, automata,  call them what you will, were inspired by some vague sense of Victorian aesthetic, Gipsy Balkan sideshows and all manner of bizarre storytelling, and mysterious objects that I saw as a child and never possessed. My interpretation of these often strange things came together to create a series of objects, which now, many years on after their conception (there were hundreds actually, but only a few survived or were not sold off), seem equally mysterious.   I cannot recapture the enthusiasm with which I spent hundreds of hours making these things. To me, the...

A suite of prints accompanied by poems. August 2015. Add caption

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was born in 1906 and died in 1989. He is best known for his plays, but he also wrote novels and for radio and television. Probably the most famous is Waiting for Godot, a play where two tramps wait for someone called Godot, who never appears. His other plays include Not I, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Here are ten of his best quotes. 1.  "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." 2.  "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world." 3.  "Habit is a great deadener." 4.  "No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found." 5.  "We are all born mad. Some remain so." 6.  "Words are all we have." 7.  "Birth was the death of him." 8.  ...

“Once more there sounded within me the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity, no other chance will be given to us.”  ―  Nikos Kazantzakis ,  Zorba the Greek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikos_Kazantzakis