Texts
Thoughts on Practice
My work consists of performance, set design, sculpture, and installation, yet at the core of my practice, I am a painter. Coming from this background, I have formulated a visual language that transfers to all these mediums. I am coming from a lineage of artists like Matisse, Hartley, Niki de Saint Phalle Louise Bonnet and Tal R. I use bold forms that mold into familiar shapes in order to describe a figure. I see form as something mailable. Shapes are abstracted to create a composition rather than depict a subject. My use of color is instinctive, I strive for a harmony that makes sense emotionally rather than logically.
For me painting is a spiritual act. It is a way of traveling to a time when the sacred and the profane were united; resonating with a force of love that permeates through all existence. Away of seeing ourselves as part of nature and of all life forms. This knowledge is ingrained in traditions such as the Dream Time of the Australian Aborigines, The Beloved in Sufism and the Great Goddess of Neolithic communities in Old Europe. These ideas can provide us with direction in a time of unlimited access to information yet with a deep lack of meaning.
While these approaches have not been absorbed by the academic community, they can give us important insight on how to structure systems of respect amongst ourselves and our environment. Tracing the fundamental concepts of ‘western thought’ and progress to Ancient Greece and further back, I try to find where rationality took over intuition as a valid form of knowledge. I see our perception of gender as a direct expression of this paradigm shift. I question these roles, seeing ourselves not as only political yet as spiritual and ecological beings belonging to a grander whole.
To talk about these ideas I use the language of myth. I see mythology as a string of poetic instances that capture ideas spanning from the beginning of humanity. Communicating to us both intellectually and esoterically and giving explanations our most basic human experiences. These tales hold within them cultural, historic and existential values. Speaking to our inner selves, they have been used as building blocks to construct philosophies, identities, and mass ideals. In my work, I re-approach these stories, looking deeper into theirorigins and retelling them translating a message of love, unity, and equality.
The Earth as Lover,
Not Just Mother.
This essay begins in a grove of palms trees that grow in a gorge close to the sea in Southern Crete.Here the sweet water and the salt water mix, and the air is full of moisture. I am camping with myfamily on a riverbank, and there are no other people around as the evening light fades and the sound ofthe cicadas starts to die down. But I am sure I can hear the distant sounds of a group of women on thesame riverbank, perhaps a few dozen metres from where I am sitting. There are older women washing, children playing, nursing mothers, and pregnant women all in a familial group, all enjoying the sweetwater and the shade of the Cretan Date palms, naked and natural among the Oleanders.
But there are no women here with me. I am alone with my child and partner, who are off exploring the rocks upstream. The vision is a distant echo of one shared with me by the artist Aristeidis Lappas manymonths ago of an encounter he had on this very riverbank. Coming across these women was thecoming to life of many ideas that he had been exploring about the role of the Mother Goddess andsocieties where women had parity but did not dominate, as made tangible in the scholarship of MarijaGimbutas, Carol P. Christ and Miriam Robbins-Dexter, in particular. It was the beginning of anongoing engagement with the feminine aspect inherent in all life—not limited to sex or gender alone.And it also situates Crete as a place of great importance in the formation of Lappas’ relationship tonature, to mythology and to himself as an artist.
Looking with the eyes of Love Text
In many other cases, this would have been a three paragraph text pinning down on some key information about the artists thinking, their careers, and achievements, as well an insightful interpretation on their work by the curator. This text does not go down this route. One could evensay that it reacts towards it. Ultimately, I would like this to be a guide into ones experience of the show this text is attached to. I would like this text to give words to emotions or thoughts that theviewer might go through yet does not know how to describe, or how to frame. In order tounderstand most of the sensory stimuli we receive from our surroundings, we need to give them aname. We need to create a mental form to capture them and call them a thing in order to conceivethem.
For example, I could describe this sensation of a green form, akin to the colors found on the ground underneath it and in many of it’s sibling clusters beside it. Going close, the clusters separate into a multitude of segments, all rustling together in the movements of an unknown dance. Smells of sun grown life, confident caresses on the skin. Each dancing segmentconnected through pathways, streets and avenues. As if the ground under your toes coagulatedin directions towards the sky springing out cheerful little platforms in celebration. All hail thiscelebration. It is these wonderful sensations that we have grown to understand as tree. And we do need to call them something, for if we didn't, we would all be lost in poetry, and much to my dismay, I have to admit that this would not be too practical.
For example, I could describe this sensation of a green form, akin to the colors found on the ground underneath it and in many of it’s sibling clusters beside it. Going close, the clusters separate into a multitude of segments, all rustling together in the movements of an unknown dance. Smells of sun grown life, confident caresses on the skin. Each dancing segmentconnected through pathways, streets and avenues. As if the ground under your toes coagulatedin directions towards the sky springing out cheerful little platforms in celebration. All hail thiscelebration. It is these wonderful sensations that we have grown to understand as tree. And we do need to call them something, for if we didn't, we would all be lost in poetry, and much to my dismay, I have to admit that this would not be too practical.
A Companion to the Way Towards the Door
This essay is an account for what happened during the day my father, Manos Lappas, passedaway and how I experienced it as his companion towards this crossing. This was an event thatgreatly influenced my work and my ideas. It was a pivotal moment in the way I understood theworld and my surroundings. It is for that reason why I chose to share this text. I am writing thisshort introduction quite some time after the initial text. Working on it brings up many emotions, and it has been very hard for me to edit it to a completed stage. Therefore, I have chosen topresent it in exactly the way I wrote it containing all its imperfections, as a form of honesty towardsthe events that happened on that day and my recalling of them through the process of writing them.
We had all known for a while that it was coming, and we watched the process taking place. My father was ill, and he was deteriorating. More than anything, it was the fact that he did not want to be alive. This had been so for a while and we knew it. Depression had gotten to him, and as much as we wanted to help, he was not able to help himself. This was really hard for a while, and it was cause for a lot of anger amongst us. It was painful to see a man that did not even want to try toget better. Even if he was able to, even if he was able to physically and mentally preform thetasks, he did not allow himself this ability. His unwillingness for effort denied him that ability. He believed him self crippled and so he was. This was a process that was gradually happening forabout three years, yet the turning point was he moved in with me and I started taking care of him.In a way this sounds a lot more simple than it actually was. Moving in with someone simplyimplies that two people are living in the same space without the reference of all the differenteffects this might have on the individuals. As my father had lost the will to function for himself and to be honest also the physical capabilities, he relied a lot on me. Well actually he tried a lot not to,and for my part I was also refusing thee fact that he was unable to carry out these tasks. I was soangry at him. Maybe the reason that I thought he was able to do these things was that he was myfather. He had to able to do those things, if he wasn’t able to do it then who would be? I was theone though that saw his whole process, and I was with him since the first day he had to go to thehospital. I was the one that had to change his clothes and take him to the toilet. I was the one thathad to put his trousers on him. I had to become my fathers father, and that in its self is somethingvery big. Taking on this responsibility was crazy. Both psychologically and spiritually, let alone onwhat such a processes can teach someone about masculinity and our perceptions of these roles.The role of the father and the role of the son. This was all leading to the one moment where thisjourney actually began, that moment was my fathers death.