Title: Proximity
Medium: Oil on gessoed linen
Dimensions: 35 x 45.5 cm
Year: 2025
This painting is based on a photograph I took just outside my home in the northern suburbs of Athens. What you see is the quiet edge of a familiar neighbourhood - and in the distance, an industrial fire unfolding beneath a clear summer sky.
I was drawn to the strange tension between stillness and danger. There's no visible panic, no sirens - just a silent cloud of smoke rising behind the everyday. That feeling of something unsettling creeping into the familiar stayed with me.
Technically, the painting was built slowly in layers of oil paint, with an underdrawing used to map the architecture and vegetation before gradually building atmosphere and light. I tried to stay close to the photographic source while also letting painterly decisions shift the emotional register.
What interests me most is that quiet moment after something has happened - when time feels suspended, and the ordinary world becomes slightly unfamiliar.