GEORGE SFOUGARAS ARTWORKS

This is an excerpt from the book entitled 'Personal Maps' PERSONAL MAPS - SENSE OF PLACE AND IDENTITY. A COLLECTION OF PRINTS 'I LOOKED INSIDE' I looked inside This old heart And there the river Still ran And everything Was full Of you. 'I LOOKED INSIDE' It was a hot day, but luckily there had been cloud cover, and as the day drew to a close, the air began to cool and fragrant as it drifted over the mountain herbs that hug the rugged landscape. I took an unusual turn in the main road and I found myself parked next to an old agricultural commission sign. On a weathered map, I could just about make out some local species of birds and a path leading to the river. I decided to take the little dirt track, and within a few minutes, I was amongst old olive trees and allotments that must have been thriving some thirty years ago. Their borders lay clearly delineated in big riverbed stones.  I realised that place was, in fact, the d...

This is an excerpt from the book entitled 'Personal Maps' PERSONAL MAPS - SENSE OF PLACE AND IDENTITY. A COLLECTION OF PRINTS 'IZMIR' I looked for love and redemption. Life still goes on, It has spread like a blanket over it all. The souls of our ancestors Do they exist? If so, the Crest and the Cross Must be reconciled by now. Let us then look for love in the new ruins I know it must be there Let the people be Let them find peace In the newborn. 'IZMIR' This face emerged as an homage to Da Vinci. I wanted a timeless quality and an unusual vehicle for the rather grim narrative. The illustrations are about the destruction of Smyrna (Izmir) in 1922.  It is one of the saddest images in this series of prints and depicts the plight of all those affected by the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. The figure of the woman to the right is a version of my grandmother who was carrying my mother at the time. Although sur...

This is an excerpt from the book entitled 'Personal Maps' PERSONAL MAPS - SENSE OF PLACE AND IDENTITY. A COLLECTION OF PRINTS 'STORIES FROM MY MOTHER' All your stories I now carry Sometimes I retell them to my children. Now that you are gone I listen more carefully. Yes, I am still listening Your voice In a time of not knowing Knew Everything. 'STORIES FROM MY MOTHER' Some time ago, I completed a series of prints which were grouped under the title 'Songs from My Father'. My father used to sing a lot to us when we were young, and I still remember the lyrics and melodies as if it was yesterday. My mother had stories of the family and of past times. Sometimes she told us fantastical tales of monsters and heroes, of historical happenings and myths. It was hard to gauge the historical validity of some of the reminiscences, and as I grew older, I was not always as ready to accept them as fact. It was to my surpr...

This is an excerpt from the book entitled 'Personal Maps' PERSONAL MAPS - SENSE OF PLACE AND IDENTITY. A COLLECTION OF PRINTS 'A MAP OF THEN' Let me Show you A Map Of Then. More real Than this town. Your laughter echoes From the place Where We Hid . The 'Map of Then' This image materialised one day when I was sitting near the open window of our little house. I was thinking about how useful it would be if we had a map of the village. Apparently, a long time ago the streets had names and signs, and a previous mayor had even designated the steep road to the village square, one-way.  Sadly now there are hardly any street signs or house numbers. Finding anything means finding someone to ask. It is sad to see what is happening to the rural areas in Crete.  As the old people pass away, the properties often stay unoccupied for extended periods of time, and thus the population of individual villages have decl...