ELEFTERIA VLAVIANOS

‘Evocations’ is a continued evolution of a body of paintings that emerged following my residency at Château d’Orquevaux in France in 2023. These images are painted from memory, drawn from my experience of walking along the Manoise River (La Manoise) in the morning light, observing the mist as it shifted and unfolded. Over 28 days, I photographed this experience, capturing its ephemeral nature. From this perspective, these paintings serve as both an evocation of place and an expression of experience.

The depiction of mist, fog, and rain in painting can be traced back to Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian, and later, in the age of Romanticism, to Turner and Caspar David Friedrich. Historically, such atmospheric elements were often associated with caution, distrust, and mystery. However, my experience of being immersed in them was one of beguiling beauty.

Through close observation and deep immersion, I became increasingly aware of how the eye perceives—or more specifically, how the eye might feel what it sees, both in real time and through the stillness of a photograph. Working on a larger scale brought the realisation that mist, in particular, not only conceals but is in a constant state of revealing—unveiling details the eye might initially overlook. This interplay between concealment and revelation, along with the experience of “sight-feeling,” is central to this body of work. It allows me to engage with the poetics of painting itself and explore the fluid, elusive materiality of oil paint.

This relationship also led me to consider formal concerns—between flatness and horizontality, depth of field and colour systems—in translating photographic imagery into painted form. As a result, these paintings do not seek exactitude but rather aim to capture the essence of landscape: the fleeting, transient qualities of nature in its ever-changing states.