The Work of Returning
Crete, September–October 2026 I came to Crete intending, at least in part, to rest. It is a curious thing, returning to a place you know intimately. You imagine that familiarity will make fewer demands upon you. That you might sit quietly, watch the light move across the mountains, listen to the occasional conversation drifting from the village square, and allow the days to pass without requiring anything of them. Crete, however, has never been particularly interested in my intentions. We returned to our little house in Potamies, a village where the past survives not so much in monuments as in the ordinary arrangement of things. The stones, the narrow streets, the old doorways, the conversations between neighbours. There are histories here that have been written down, others that have been forgotten, and some that remain hidden in plain sight. I have been making art for most of my life, yet I still find that places like this unsettle my understanding of what an artist actually does. We...