A letter for S. Therianos...

Life and death are constant, the most extraordinary things we are certain of. Within those  two forces are human things at work on various projects to prolong life and out of item death. Men there are artists, creative ones who are work within the framework of the two, who are giving you in one way or an other both sides and many more of the phenomena. Therefore the immediacy of the paintings of SOTIRIS THERIANOS is one such artist. Most paintings “tachist” in  execusion contain all the forms off phenomena such as life certain action growth cataclysm’s  sun and surely the underworld of Persephone and Demetra. There are not easy paintings to take in all at once. They  demand from the viewer a certain amount of humility  and not a personal antagonism or  egoism. They should be savored as a fine wine, and you will be the richer for it.

[Theodoros  Stamos, Lefkada 2/9/1984]

“….For Therianos, art originates from his own necessity; he has had the perception to reach within himself and find his own method and  vocabulary  of  forms. In the works from a few years ago, sweeping allover gestures of dense paint create whirlwinds of activity. Often  these pictures suggest a  shadowy  dark netherworld. The r many  names, and  such  correspondences are transformed in these pictures into a more personal myth that, thoughealm of nightmares in which   demons take shape. The  chasms of Hades  come to mind,  as  do the ancient Homeric tales as well. But  Hades has elusive, can be all too real.  Therianos’s presences  exist in the present, interiorized, changing, procceding through the act of painting. They are not pretty or soothig but tough and direct, very like Lackaday itself. The basic technique is that of  Tachism, but the end result is uniquely Therianos, resembling the recording of some primeval dance in which the entire body is caught up in wild  rapid gyrations. “O dark shivering in the roots and the leaves! / Come forth sleepless form in the gathering silence / raise your head from your  cupped hands / so that your will be done and you tell me again [George Seferis, “Stratis Thalassinos Among the Agapanthi”] In the more recent works, the imagery is simplifying, even as it is coming forth from the earlier cavernous regions. Painterly blacks and whites accompanied by daubs of color form shapes implying hatching, breaking through, fertilization, flying, crawling. Insects, slugs, serpents, and other creatures  of  earlier evolutionary stages appear through the painted gestures. They compose mysterious tableaux, like pieces of mind engaged in an unknowable intercourse. They  somehow appear both dangerous and inviting and hover precariously in between the two extremes of feeling. They personify both sensations  of untouched  nature and of raw emotion. The allusive forms in these pictures come into being through the artist’s personal experiences, yet  they are capable of  conversing with  any viewer who approaches them with  open eyes and spirit. “It is the real face, when people have no cover. You see the feeling; you are iside, “Therianos says of his work”. As we approach another fin de siécle, and look back on the last hundred years of art and “progress” it is refreshing to renew contact  with  the  archetypal elements without the usual overlay of theory and psychological  rhetoric. At a time when  the art  world  has  become dominated by methodology and  academicizing  trends, Therianos’s pictures touch base with the simple core of human emotions. When  I asked him if he thought that abstract painting was exhausted, Therianos answered: “Abstract painting is only of the past hundred years. Now, with all the materialism and all the  separation from the simple life, we need more contact with the inside. You live expressionism, and you cannot push it. It happens naturally”. [Barbara Cavaliere, New York City, February, 1992]