• 2020 • "Salute"

Are they sketchy colors?
Forming into lives
Balanced by their lover
On edges sharp as knives

Pulled together, waiting
Reflections on a glass
Colors born in richness
Whose moment will not pass

Whites, intense and present
Here, but are they lost?
Lining an existence
Though she ponders on its cost

This is not discovery
Nor a will to find
Her soul is pushing gradually
To free her artist’s mind

Touching, feeling gently
A lover waiting something
Stirring though uncertain
Shemoves away from nothing

It’s not a night near sunrise
It’s the gentle soft between
She’s slowly leaving one life
From the sense of what had been

Poem of
Theophanis Kleanthous

Drinking is not just a question of tasting pleasure; I’ve never considered it as such. Drinking for me was the way to my liberation, myself free from restrictions and shyness, established in my formation since I was a child, a formation affected by the narrowminded moral standards of my era.
Sharing drinking moments, with myself or with my closed ones, is one of the most truthful experience in my relationships with my inner and exterior world. Letting others see my reality, without defenses and masks, is for me my way to show love and affection.
There is another aspect, of course, the one of drinking when things get really dull and meaningless.
The relation between artists and alcohol has always been a close one, since alcohol helps you to find and lose yourself at the same time, unconsciously. Getting drunk is though, a conscious decision to momentary madness, when everyone takes life too seriously, up to the point of losing its meaning.

These paintings were created with the simple thought of documenting a favorite habit, as I always do with people, things and places I love, an excuse to express my love for this ritual, and the pleasure to see empty glasses filled up and get empty again…

I drink
As a reminder of yesterday
As a therapy for today
It’s a shining window to the future
It’s sharing
It’s forgetting
It’s letting go
It’s bursting out
It’s a reflection of our inside
Salute!