Eleni's art practice has spanned 30 years and can be
grouped into the following themes that often overlap:
Refuge / Women in Art / Shared Humanity
Refuge
Interrupted Reverie
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Interrupted Reverie is an ongoing series of paintings that explore the work of Tom Thompson and Canadian artists that formed the Group of Seven. Within their beautiful landscapes I envision Hellenistic sculpture, vulnerability, history, and hope.
The paintings in Interrupted Reverie, convey many things. They explore my desire as a first generation Canadian to feel like I belong here (Like the Pine). They emphasize that I know who has always been here (Truth). They continue to express environmental concerns highlighted by my female predecessors in Canadian art, most notably, Emily Carr (Nike on a Canoe). They commemorate the lost lives of men and women who died on North American soil in various battles. My landscapes are beautiful and accessible, but they also tell universal stories of war, colonization, and much needed gestures of connection and shared humanity (Seen).
Greek Beach
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I have two sons who in 2015 were just a few years older than the Kurdi brothers, two young migrant boys whose bodies washed up on the beaches of Turkey. The photography work I created while in Greece the following year, was fluid, unplanned, and un-orchestrated. I observed my sons at play, and adjusted my cameras settings, altering the beach scenes before me, until they turned into spiritual, hopeful scenes of survival, resurrection, and reunion.
Travellers
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Travellers is a series of cropped family photographs that highlight images taken when my parents and their siblings were preparing to leave Greece for economic opportunities in either Australia, the United States, or Canada.
Blowing up these images into mural sized prints, brings lost details into view. The old woman looking through a barred window in “Farewell Photo,” for example, was barely noticeable in the original 2x3 inch print. Her sad face looking out at the young men posing for a photo, preludes the deafening quiet of villages that lost entire generations of their grown children to migration.
