Technique used:
- The first layer is invisible now. It was a beautiful sunrise painted in
watercolours, mainly pink and diluted reds – and in its invisibility it is no longer depicting everyday life, or
a life before.
- The second layer is visible as there are some cracks under the paint. It is painted on top of
the first landscape. I put thick layers of poster paints, black and grey shadows
in order to depict something unspeakable and painful in people's lives - maybe
hunger, war, or persecutions, even dangerous escape. This layer dried and cracked and
is peeling leaving a broken ugly feeling, with glimpses or memories of a previous better life.
-
The top layer - which is the one visible now is done with acrylics and
crushed eggshells
- it shows an iceberg or a wall with rubble or sea waves in the
foreground, and a rough sea and ominous skies in the background. There
is no visible
way out; there are no happy colours, there is no idea where to go from
now on...
The message:
What I tried to show is the complexity and multilayer of the dramas or
difficulties of life, or within one place. It is inspired by, but not
restricted to, the stories of the multitudes of immigrants escaping the atrocities of their
homeland desperate for a better life, It is also for all those who did not make it
alive, all the broken families and embraces the people who
feel endangered by their arrival, by the numbers, by the businesses they could be losing,
and the message of the politicians who say nothing or worse, say offensive things...
And where is help? Where is hope? What to do?