Memories into Art

Today in the studio August 7th, 2017

When I was around 9 or 10 years old, my school decided that we needed to see the rest of the island of Crete. Born and bred in Heraklion, in the capital, we were convinced that our world stopped at the suburbs. Of course, as time has passed, I realise that there was actually a lot to explore, and most of it very unfamiliar and diverse. Crete is a large place and has due to necessity and constant attacks from the sea, its inhabitants created little worlds in the interior and in the long-suffering sea ports. Little lost, fortified worlds, places invisible from the old roads, hidden away from the tax collectors, marauders and pirates.

Chania, the subject of this print, seemed like an entirely different continent. Tiny compared to Heraklion and very run down. What was actually happening was that Heraklion was been brutally redeveloped and Chania had not yet become a victim of the concrete fever that gripped most of Greece in the sixties. Now, parts of Chania are really quite magical. Old Palazzo's shine, heavy wooden doors lacquered and old Venetian motifs freshly carved.

My print focuses on my childhood memory of what I saw. The Giali Tzami (the Mosque of the Shore) was without its minaret and run down after being closed down in the 1920s. I suspect that even before then, at the turn of the century, there would have been a sense that the island was changing drastically, as Ottoman subjects had begun to flee the interior and settle into the cities for safety, before hastily departing for Turkey.

My print has borrowed a lot from the text books of my childhood. The simple lithographs in the pages were economical with their use of colour. It was always the same few greens, strange reds, yellows and less often blue, that made each page appear to be designed by a man that had run out of colour and was struggling to make things look as amazing as possible despite that.

So here it is my memory of what I saw. Not what was there, but more the amalgam of all the little bits and pieces that stuck in my memory to this day. The ever-present church on the hill. The angular Venetian fort, the olive trees and little boats. These things are imprinted in my mind and on my life, in ways that I cannot even begin to describe.

I hope it awakens something in you. Something of a place that you once saw perhaps, which is now looking back at you, from deep in your memory bank. A place where the people still believed that life was magical and that with hard work everything was possible. That was the Crete of my childhood, and now, if you want it, you too can claim a small part of its life. Our reality may be different, but our dreams can and often do remain the same. Enjoy.

With Love,

Yiorgos .