Presence: Drawings from Greece

During my time at Athena Standard Residency, I focused on creating a new series of drawings inspired by the Greek sculptures and spiritual relics made available on view in the Greek museums and historical sites. I was most interested in the spiritual story, history and personal power of votives and Ephanany statues. I was struck with the idea of immortality and how humans are the indicators of what remains alive or becomes forgotten.

To prepare for my trip to Delphi, I read The Sibyl Par Lagerkvist. A beautiful parable-like structured story, the book captured the relationship between god and human through the loss of faith and innocence. The driving character intensity of love and ultimately disillusionment shaped the compositions on the pink paper.

Votives and Ephanany Statues were the manifestations of the devotee and the spiritual being. The power held in these spiritual structures during the ancient times and how the presence of the spiritual is still present in the essence of the “shell” we see today. Most of my drawings focus on this concept of the immortal experience in reality and also transforming into a shell through disregard and forgetfulness.