YIAYIA

I barely knew my maternal Yiayia (grandmother), but she was a significant figure in our family and was often spoken of with reverence after she died.  She spoke little and in my young eyes was a mysterious figure in the black clothes of a widow; I can still see her wandering in their enclosed garden, the mulberry trees heavy with fruit. Last summer, I set off trying to discover who she was, because no one knew her unmarried name.

Through a set of events that I can only describe as very fortunate, I did. In the archival subterranean storage area in the Central Library in Heraklion, the list of passengers that were 'repatriated' to Greece from the war-torn Aegean coast of Turkey and Anatolia, gave me the answer. Her married name was listed there, wrongly recorded as they entered the country as Georgiou, but I knew that she was with her husband several children and I recognized their names. Anastasia my mother and her two sisters, Stella and Dimitra. And three brothers. The children were all young, and she must have faced hardships that I can only imagine. 

Since re-discovering her, I have had this image of an old, wise woman on my mind. The old lady in the picture is an approximation,  painted from older faces that I came across, whilst researching her life and looking for images that reminded me of her.  I have no definitive or clear photographs of Yiayia, but I have a sense that I remember her, somehow. I  broadened the forehead to make her resemble my memory of my grandmother, and made the eyes slightly different, one soft and the other harder in expression....but in essence, she is a universal grandmother figure, a wise presence. 

Throughout my life, I have been surrounded by strong women who have made homes, sustained families, created businesses, and made things happen. I wanted this archetypal grandmother figure to express something of those things and to say something of life, of having lived, suffered, survived and nourished others with her strength and wisdom. In the canvas, there is a bump near the heart. It was a knot in the weave, a peculiarity of the canvas, which  I liked. It gave me the opportunity to reinforce it from the back with a  piece of canvas in the shape of a cross, before backing the painting with an old inherited family pillowcase. Like all people of her generation, faith was a rich reservoir of strength, tradition, and sadly at times, misplaced loyalties. 

The war that finally displaced the family was informed by the national identities shaped by religious affiliations, as much, if not more as language and place of birth.  The small flaw, like a wound, has 'healed' and contains something special, a metaphor for life itself. I often hide symbols in my work and this was very much in keeping with that practice.