The paintings of Anna-Maria Papadimitriou, due to the manner in which their form is brought together, utilise a series of contrasts: elements real and utopian, movement and calm, things timeless and instantaneous... Colour plays a dominant role in the creation of the artistic space. Below the colour surfaces, however, there simultaneously exist complex tracings that organise the structure of each piece. These two elements, manifest colour and covert design, define the function of a resonant space, without specific descriptive references, in a manner difficult to classify in current style categories. It is a form of painting whose starting points lie in experient ial or artistic stimuli, which are gradually transformed into fresh images, absolutely contemporary, built with sensitivity and knowledge. Despite the complex proce ss, the initial theme continues to function all the way through to the final result, maintaining its loaded meaning and its sig nificance. This leads to a sense of completion and honesty, which reinforces the persuasiveness of the images, underlining their truth.

Yannis Valavanidis

Painter – Professor Emeritus, Athens School of Fine Arts

Xamou

The Greek artist displays a prodigious talent for painting. It is all so soft, tender and balanced. The canvases have a subtle underlying structure evident of an act which began quite loose, playful and sketchy followed by settling on one organising principle before developing the work to its full glory.

Some of her paintings are titled, others not. Others again fit into a series such as ‘light scapes’ which in turn became the title of a solo exhibition in Athens. At closer inspection a work like “Aquatic passage” has thin paint which has run upwards before drying. It is not suggesting that her art defies Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation as much as the artist having observed some happy accidents and decided to turn the canvas upside down at some point in the process.

Papadimitriou refers to her work as ‘unfamiliar internal landscapes’. Of course, it is a deeply personal journey for the artist that we could not and should not mimic as viewers. But for our part, at least, the overlap between the artist’s journey and our perception is an emotional connection in the literal sense that emotion equals energy in motion. With this connection, you never feel pickled in a jar and pushed about at whim, but you have a sense of the work pulling you along gently, but firmly.

When the art is regarded in a sequence, it is as if one is cocooned inside some thin aqueous membrane. A sensory space that allows light to penetrate in soft yet diffused rays, resulting in the outer space and the subconscious teaming up to generate abstract imagery.

It is a state of being that may spark off memories of sky and sea, or some fleeting moment as if seen through a frosted pane of glass. It is a welcoming shock-absorbing space offering you little sense of direction. Here you are simply adrift as if floating gently about by the aid of rising and ebbing tides in an estuary. You somehow feel more than satisfied capturing the interplay between light, darkness and subtle colours.

To find out more about the artist and her art, please visit her website or her facebook page.

Anna-Maria Papadimitriou’s internal landscapes.

Listen to the silence. Listen to those who are silent. There is no language more deafening than that of the gaze. M.S.

Once upon a time painting was a window that introduced the world to a visible revelation. Today painting experiences a crisis in its very essence, and if it doesn’t want to be consumed by illustrational naivete, it should delve deep into the invisible, and render it perceivable. In other words it should render internal life sensate. Which is by no means easy! Comparable, difficult subjects are what the daring, at times bordering on insolently so, artist Anna-Maria Papadimitriou deals with. Her painting is luscious in its use of colour yet sensitive, proportioning her cloth equally of free improvisation and conscious self-restraint. In other words, she plays with boundaries (to their outer limits). Her compositions seek an inner light, submit internal landscapes, ascertain the secrets of the night with questions of the daytime. Oftentimes pleasurable, decorative solutions exorcise the evil borne by the cold greens or the blacks. Pas mal. In short this is gestural, emotional painting that seeks a path amongst the leading exponents of lyrical abstraction, including Soulages, Wols, Riopelle, Hartung, and Mathieu, but also Greek artists including Maltezos, Svoronos, Lefakis, Kessanlis and others. At issue is the fact that consistency and continuity should be present in the history of artistic forms so that things do not happen in vain. And furthermore so works do not rot before the indifferent gaze of ignorant or presumptuous viewers and each generation can learn from the previous one. - Does such painting have a raison d' etre nowadays? - Can an audience be formulated otherwise, as people nowadays have television vulgarity stuffed down their throats on a daily basis? (as we have degenerated into a nation of TV addicts?) - Is there time for contemplation before a painted image that seeks what is self-evident? In other words, to move our senses, without at the same time extorting an emotional response? - Don’t be in a hurry to respond. As we’ve already said: these are difficult issues to discuss...

20-01-10 Manos Stefanidis

P.S.: The system requires time without “history”, the word without its meaning, an image without its flesh.

P.P.S.: The past, and its infinite time, are forms of eternity to which each of us can lay claim.