Hello everyone!

Γεια σε όλους! (το κείμενο ακολουθεί στα ελληνικά πιο κάτω)

I hope you are well and keeping relatively sane in this crazy situation we find ourselves in.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote here on the blog. My painting has absorbed me to such an extent that it has been impossible to dedicate time to writing. However, perhaps this is also a result of our being ‘socially isolated’. There is a feeling that the world is not moving in the way it used to, and this prompts one to keep things to oneself… perhaps. As far as my studio work is concerned, I am indeed keeping a lot of the things I work on to myself as I prefer to look forward to a time and place where they will be exhibited physically.

Paradoxically, the reason for this post is that I want to invite you to visit my studio!

I am sharing with you a short video I made , with the help of my partner and fellow artst Ilias Koen. The video was made after an invitation to participate in the ‘Artists in their Studios’ videos of the youtube channel ‘Athens Artwalks’ where it will also be uploaded. I present processes and concepts of my studio practice, in the environment of that ‘transitional space’ which is the studio.

‘Transitional space’ is a concept developed by D. W. Winnicott[1] to refer to those spaces that exist in the boundary between the internal and the external. Spaces that pertain neither to fantasy nor to external reality, or rather both to fantasy and to external reality. This past year I have been thinking a lot about the artist’s studio on these terms. The studio as the place that provides a space for creativity to develop, to exist, inside it rises a world in-between fantasy and the reality of action and material. The studio encapsulates Paul Valery’s phrase ‘There is another world, but it exists within this one’.

In the end, I enjoyed doing the video, although it was a challenge to be the producer, videographer, and editor of this presentation pertaining to my work. I hope you will like it. Enjoy!

Katerina

[1] I am thankful to my colleague and friend Ileanna Arnaoutou for bringing Winnicott back to my attention. It has been many years, since my studies in Social Psychology, that I had read some of his writings.

Studio Visit

Γεια σε όλους!

Ελπίζω να είστε καλά και να διατηρείτε όσο το δυνατόν σώας τας φρένας, μέσα σε αυτήν την τρέλλα όπου καλούμαστε να ζήσουμε.

Έχει περάσει καιρός απο την τελευταία φορά που έγραψα εδώ στο blog. Ο λόγος είναι, εν μέρει τουλάχιστον, οτι η δουλειά μου με έχει απορροφήσει τόσο πολυ που είναι δύσκολο να αφιερώσω χρόνο στο γράψιμο. Ίσως όμως να οφείλεται και στην επίδραση που έχει η ‘κοινωνική απομόνωσή’ μας. Έχεις την εντύπωση οτι ο κόσμος δεν κινείται όπως πριν και αυτό ίσως να ωθεί κάποιον να κρατάει τα πράγματα για τον εαυτό του. Δεν είναι σίγουρα καιρός που ευνοεί την κοινωνικότητα. ¨Οσον αφορά στην εικαστική μου δουλειά, αυτό είναι σίγουρα έτσι. Κρατάω τα περισσότερα πράγματα για τον εαυτό μου, για να τα μοιραστώ στη φυσική τους μορφή σε κάποιον προσεχόντα χρόνο και χώρο.

Παραδόξως, ο λόγος αυτού του πόστ είναι μια πρόσκληση σε μια μικρή επίσκεψη στο εργαστήριό μου. Μοιράζομαι εδώ ένα βίντεο που έκανα μόνη μου, με τη βοήθεια του καλλιτέχνη και συντρόφου μου Ηλία Κοέν. Το βίντεο το έκανα μετά απο πρόσκληση για συμμετοχή στα βίντεο ‘Artists in their Studios’ του καναλιού ‘Athens Artwalks’ όπου θα ανεβεί επίσης. Παρουσιάζει διαδικασίες και έννοιες της εργαστηριακής μου πρακτικής, μέσα στο περιβάλλον του ‘μεταβατικού χώρου’ που είναι το εργαστήριο.

Ο ‘Μεταβατικός χώρος’ είναι μια έννοια του ψυχαναλυτή D.W.Winnicott[1] και αναφέρεται σε χώρους οι οποίοι βρίσκονται στο ενδιάμεσο μεταξύ του εσωτερικού και του εξωτερικού. Αυτοί οι χώροι δεν ανήκουν αμοιγώς ούτε στην φαντασία ούτε στην εξωτερική πραγματικότητα η μάλλον, ανήκουν καί στην φαντασία καί στην εξωτερική πραγματικότητα. Αυτόν τον χρόνο που πέρασε σκέφτομαι πολύ το εργαστήριο με αυτούς τους όρους. Ως το μέρος που παρέχει τον χώρο στην δημιουργικότητά να υπάρξει και να εξελιχθεί. Εκεί μέσα εξελίσσεται ένας κόσμος ανάμεσα στην φαντασίωση και την πραγματικότητα της δράσης και των υλικών. Το εργαστήριο εκφράζει την φράση του Paul Valery ‘Υπαρχει ένας άλλος κόσμος, αλλα είναι μέσα σε αυτόν εδώ’.

Μου άρεσε τελικά που έκανα το βίντεο, αν και μου φάνηκε δύσκολο να γίνω ο παραγωγός, παρουσιαστής, κινηματογραφιστής και μοντέρ μιας παρουσίασης της δουλειάς μου. Ελπίζω να το χαρείτε!

Κατερίνα

[1] Ευχαριστώ πολύ την φίλη και συνάδελφο Ηλεάννα Αρναούτου που μου τον ξαναθύμησε στην παρούσα στιγμή.

Hallo everybody

I hope you are all well, stay at home and keep your spirits reasonably high, in these strange days..

Here in Athens things are getting harder. Today a total curfew was announced. People will be prevented from moving, apart from going to the super market pharmacy or doctor, exercising outside alone and commuting to and from work . For these you will need to issue special permits. It seems that I will not be able to move freely between home and studio for some time. Not that I can’t but it seems rather complicated. . It’s ok since I have already moved some of my stuff at home and I work from here.

I am not freaking out. On the contrary, I think I am getting a lot from this lockdown. Here I share some of the things and thoughts that make up my everyday reality these days.

I started meditating. Everyday, for 15 minutes. This is the first time I actually commit to doing this and it is thanks to Justin Michael Williams and his audible book ‘Stay Woke’. I actually started with this book two weeks before the coronavirus incident, but it came at the right moment.

I do my yoga practice everyday. Again, after 5 years of practicing, it is the first time I do it everyday. I try to keep my practice as soft as possible. I don’t want to push myself to reach any standard, just to quiet my mind and intention and start recognizing patterns and sensations in my body and way of moving and being

What has happened lately is that little by little I am starting to recognize an underlying pattern of believing or feeling something is not right, something is not good enough. This is the reason I often feel agitated, not satisfied with what lies before me, thinking I have to change something, correct something, be otherwise. It is the reason I sometimes get tense and do things in a hurry, the reason I sometimes destroy wonderful paintings by overworking them.

I have decided to attempt to focus on not pushing myself to attain the unattainable, a standard of perfection, if I may call it this, unattainable because not even existent - it does not have a specific form. It is just Other than what Is.

Even though I chose my path in order to be free, in order to be able to explore and express my deepest desires, in order to escape the feeling of not being where I want to be, I have not escaped the trap of needing an approval, an outside confirmation of what is considered good, or right for that matter. Of course we have all heard that ‘right’ does not exist in art. But my experience tells me otherwise.

I remember I started painting as an antidote to theory. Having studied Social Psychology and then doing my master’s in Media and Communications, I wanted to do something closer to my being. The keyword here is do. I wanted to do things, not think about them, theorize about them or apply other people’s theories about them.

I started painting. And even though my passion was dance, there was something in the act of painting, that drew me more and more to it. Surely this was in part due to its solitary nature. Solitary means being left on one’s own devices, having to decide for oneself how to do things.

Not adhering to standards…

I also saw it as better suited to what I was looking for. My authentic expression, beyond boundaries and limitations. There were no standards, or the standards were so many and variable that practically did not exist. Or so I saw it in the beginning, and this is how I practiced it, with enthusiasm and passion.

Still, after the second year in art school I found myself questioning the practice, myself, the meaning of it all… Teachers in art school are eager to make you get down to the important stuff – why you do what you do- so you will not spend your time painting, not knowing why, like a child…(actual words of teacher)

Or prevent you from taking the wrong path –‘you have things inside that cannot be expressed through painting’- (again, actual words) or, -‘you like this painter”? he is so passé, forget about that direction’…

Or even worse ‘STOP PAINTING”

What happened is, I stopped. For some years at least, until I was done with my studies in art school.

I started painting again right after I finished. And it has been a long way of trying to get back to how I was painting when I first started. With no preconceptions on how it had to look like. Just painting, just acting.

Of course this is something that takes a lot of practice. What I find interesting is how thinking about setting one’s own standards has connected to my thinking about painting as an action and my ongoing project on art as a process . I stop for now and will take it from here soon.

However, I want to share some last thoughts with you,

- Is it perhaps now a time to consider what we truly and authentically love about what we do, about our lives, about our relationships, and concentrate on making these particular aspects flourish, instead of trying to correct something in order to fit in a preconception of how things should be, a time of tackling the issue of believing we are not good enough, and therefore not trusting ourselves and what comes naturally?

- Is it a time now, in relative seclusion and isolation, to get more quiet and start to recognize our voice and distinguish it from the outside critic, mentor, guru, idol whatever?

- This can happen because we are getting more quiet. Perhaps this can be a way of navigating through this hard time and gaining something from it. Something invaluable for the life we are called at the moment to protect by staying quiet.

Take care and stay safe.

KPStudio

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