The quarantine and the faces that were left unfinished. The Fragments series!
Lately, I have been diving myself in my new series of paintings, called “Fragments”. It is a series presenting young girls oil portraits. These faces are all full of youth and freshness, a beauty that is envied and treasured. Their common ingredient is that they all stay unfinished yet finished in a way that paint is draining in large tears on the canvas’ surface. Faces so real because of the detail, so unreal because of their unearthly beauty and so unfinished because of the large canvas spaces left unpainted or painted with big amounts of thick, black paint.
The fact is that we are in the middle of the 3rd quarantine period, due to covid19. In Greece we are all obliged to wear a mask everywhere so, I almost never see peoples’ faces anymore. Except from my family, I don’t see anyone’s face. I don’t see smiles, sadness, mumblings, red noses or juice lips. I miss my friends’ faces, I miss even the guy’s face at the mini market or the girl’s from the pastry shop. I know that probably I won’t be seeing any during the next year and maybe even more.
So, I guess I started painting faces in order to fill the blank and now, this thing is unstoppable. I paint one face after the other. It is my way to fight the quarantine, a way not to feel alone or isolated maybe. I also realise it is a way to keep youth alive. Now that time passes in isolation and dreams, future plans, trips, exhibitions, relationships are having a brake, I oftenly feel that a year of my life was taken away from me in a violent way. I feel I may be getting older in a faster way. And I need freshness and beauty to hold on to. These girls are a placebo to fight getting older, a way to remind me that youth is in me, in everyone, it is a state of mind that I need to earn back.
Why are they left unfinished? Well, because everything is left unfinished these days. Work, projects, plans, travelling, seeing new things, meeting new people, seeing faces. So is “fragments”. Left unfinished in order to remind me that when all this covid period will have passed, I will have many things waiting for me to finish. Things that I look forward to, things that make me happy. As I hope many of you have too. So, stick to them, search for beauty and youth inside you and dream of better days, when things will have the opportunity to get finished and faces will have the opportunity to be seen freely!
