Elefteria Vlavianos - M Contemporary

My first impression of these dreamy landscapes was that they look like the covers of 19th C novels. But there must be some method in the artist's replication of almost exactly the same pattern in canvas after canvas. 

And I'm not saying that I have seen precisely the same paintings elsewhere. What you are left with is this basic sense of something having been experienced. Perhaps that's the  point. Not a statement. Not a call to action. Not another sad complaint.

Just a faint green smeared across linen. A gap between trees.  A far horizon. Faintly yellow air. While it seems facile it's surprisingly not. Actually not at all. It's not easy. 

This is not to say that I thought about the paintings long after leaving the gallery. To say this would be to lie.  And I don't lie.

What I can do is recall the company I was with. The types of conversations. The faces. The words, or at least some of them. Even my own. In Vlavianos' works you don't see the paint brushstrokes. But you feel the weight on the canvas on your mind. They dwell in memory.

This is their special genius.