Petros Petrou at Skali

PETROS Petrou invites you to visit his 9th solo exhibition of oil paintings, drawings and caricatures, which takes place at the Skali Cultural Centre in Aglandjia, Nicosia on of May 5, 6 and 7, 2006.

The exhibition will be opened by the Director of Technical Education and Culture, Charalambous Constantinou, on Friday, May 5, at 7.30pm, and everybody is welcome.

It has been written that Petrou is one of the leading naturalistic painters of Cyprus. He draws his themes from nature in Cypriot, the Greek islands and European scenery.

His palette is light and modern but his composition is based on classic modes.

He uses broken but tight brushwork and manages to capture the crisp, fresh air of the Cyprus countryside, the sunny blue atmosphere of the Aegean islands and the grand, misty scenery of Europe.

His views are panoramic and grand or serene and calm.

His colour scheme is delightful and happy and the composition strong and balanced.

He catches the light on the clouds, the reflection of the boats on the water and the sunlight on the churches with mastery and charm.

The exhibition also includes some drawings with ink and colour done quickly with a thin line and the colours are laid almost like transparent washes.

The subjects range from small fruit arrangements to extensive landscape views.

Visiting hours for Saturday, May 6 and Monday, May 7 are 10am - 1pm and 4pm-8pm.

To get to Skali (where Sir Anthony Caro once exhibited) you turn left off Limassol Road (heading out of Nicosia) after the Melkonian, follow Kyrenia Avenue, Aglandja, cross a few traffic lights, find the Skali sign and you turn left.

Rubber Duck

at My Shop

MY Shop (I suppose I mean theirs) is at 51 Ledra Street - beside Finikas restaurant and in the next street to Spike, at 18a Onasagorou, where all those shoes are on brilliant display.

The intriguing blurb reporting that there are more important things in life than art may be true but the two artists in this event - Sophia Kakoulli and Soulla Messiou - have a good track record for serious stuff, so its just possible that the move into humour may be an aesthetically-inclined breakthrough in design.

Snippets from the news release include: Having a bath will never be the same again. A new concept for Cyprus surely.

The two women, who studied fine art in London, are taking affordable design into the art world though Kate Moss has refused to model for Rubber Duck; even as a lampshade.

The two artists can adapt works to fit existing decor at home so they can’t be frocks anyway.

And, the blurb says Rubber Duck will undertake commissions for artwork and/or interior design for private homes, offices and hotels.

Klitsa in Helsinki

KLITSA Antoniou is presenting her latest work at the Stoa Cultural Centre in Helsinki from this week.

It consists of multi-media installations as well as photographs and sculpture works.

They deal with issues of displacement, hybridism, transience, mutation, Utopia and dystopia.

Autobiography 2, Tefkros

Angelides at Opus 39

THE Mayor of Nicosia, Michael zampelas, will inaugurate the exhibition of the latest work of Tefkros Angelides on Tuesday, May 2 at 7.30pm.

This is Tefkros’s fifth one-man show and consists of seven unities of collages under the general title

‘Autobiography 2,’ formed by personal experiences, feelings and speculations.

‘Escapes.’ describes small personal everyday family moments,

‘Verses,’ is an offering to his mother and the close communication they have had all through these years

‘1974,’ is the experience of war and pain.

‘Jetties,’ are a sweet dedication to the memory of his father.

‘Theft- Repatriation,’ are pieces dedicated to the late Constantinos Leventis for his great contribution to Hellenism.

‘Universe,’ describes an appreciation of man to the unknown.

Thoughts,’ presents deeper thinking and social criticism.

Eleni Nikita, Director of the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture, wrote some time ago about his work:

"Although he comes from a different area of creativity, that of architecture, he has succeeded to master colour, form and material, giving artistic solutions with very good results, as surely architecture is related to art."

Tefkros describes his work as "conjectural architecture:

"This exhibition consists of collages, with a multi-layered cubistic inclination, diminishing the use of paint and brush in favour of a very rich abundance of materials, like wood veneers, glass and glass mosaic, hand-made papers from Nepal, metal seashells and much more.

"The pieces acquire their own autonomy and they are conversed in symbols, rather than being a representation of reality.

"The shapes of the different materials re-emerge and reconstruct creating the illusion of depth although they have a frontal, two dimensional character.

"Simultaneously, because of the above reasons the pieces form small architectural exercises, keeping at the same time his synthetic abilities in vigilance and ready to be put into effect larger scale projects like buildings or interior spaces, that he is commissioned to execute as an architect.

"The paintings are done with the collage method, influenced and dedicated as to their technique, to Picasso and Braque, founders of the synthetic cubism and collage as for their synthesis, to the founders of the pioneer Dutch group De Stijl, painters Mondrian and Van Doesburg and architects G Rietveld and P.Oud.

"All of the above, driven by the new theories and discoveries on the beginning of the 20th century, dared and experimented a new approach in painting and in architecture that was based on the ‘abtraction’ and the ‘dynamic balance’ between opposite volumes, shapes, colours and materials."

Tefkros believes that, we, today in the beginning of the 21st century, live in a new era with repeated technological discoveries and for this reason he would like to express this liquidity of the procedure of understanding, by searching through his work to achieve his own ‘dynamic balance’ with himself, people, architecture, God and the universe.

Doros Heracleous at Kypriaki Gonia

THIS highly-imaginative and inventive artist exhibits at Kypriaki Gonia until the 30th of the month.

Titos Kolotas has written:

"Doros is a completely non-conventional artist. A figurative artist who exceeds limits and rules because he is an artist who seeks and experiments continuously with materials.

"These materials could be noble metals, like aliminium, or old objects bearing the weight of time and hence give capabilities of aesthetic utilisation.

"The dynamic relation of the artist and his material is precisely what gives to his work and to each separate piece of work a particular interest from the side of theoretical reflection for nature and the ontology of the work of art."

Demetriou show

GEORGIE Demetriou exhibits at Academic and General Bookshop, Larnaca, from May 12- until June 5.

The bookshop is at 41 Hermes Street and the exhibit is in the Readers Lounge.

Post-Wrexham

at Gloria Gallery

FOUR months ago Glyn Hughes had a retrospective at Canolfan Gelf Wrecsam, which is now on tour in Wales.

It was opened by Kate Clerides and curated by Tracy Simpson.

Since his return to Cyprus, he has created some new paintings and they will be shown at Gloria’s from Thursday, April 27.

Last chances

CAROL Syrimis at Amorgas Gallery until tomorrow.

Antonis N Economou exhibits at Journalist’ house – Union of Cyprus Journalists until April 21, tonight. Miriam McConnon has opened the David Lester exhibition at Kyklos Art Gallery Paphos, which will continue until Saturday, April 29.

This exhibition will include oils, watercolours and mixed media work .

A unique exhibition displays a varied collection of paintings.

Lester’s paintings include semi-representational and abstract works which reflect ideas, situations and experiences. The paintings show his interest in colour, composition and different perspectives.

Eggery is art

BELVIDERE (AP)

Decorated eggs are not just for Easter.

That was the message Donna Thomas and Julia Smith got across as they set out their "eggery" one early spring morning. They were preparing not for the holiday, but for the 13th annual Rockford Egg Show and Sale last month, which featured the works of eggshell artists from eight states, including California and Oklahoma. This year's show was held at the Midway Village Museum in Rockford, Illinois.

"We always hold it on the third weekend of March, which is close to Easter, but this is a year-round passion for us, as well as a business," Smith said.

There were painted eggshells, carved eggshells, engraved eggshells and decoupaged eggshells decked out with rhinestones and fitted with doors that swing open and shut on gold-plated hinges. Some of the eggs took months to make and can fetch prices upward of $750.

Most were far too ornate and delicate to entrust to a hopping rabbit or an egg-hunting 7-year-old, and many were so large that they would have given the poor bunny a hernia, anyway. The ostrich, emu and rhea eggs, in particular, suggest larger, more ponderous beasts.

Maybe there's an Easter Mastodon who galumphs across the nighttime fields of the Midwest each spring.

Thomas, 51, a commercial artist who has been painting nature scenes in acrylic on eggshells for four years, does not feature mastodons on her eggs, but some of her more recent creations show wooly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other Pleistocene fauna.

"I got interested in Ice Age Illinois when I did a mural for the farm where my father-in-law discovered mammoth remains," she explained. "So now I put prehistoric animals on some of my eggs." The biggest eggs Thomas paints, from ostriches and emus, can hold a whole landscape. The goose and turkey eggs might feature only a single deer or leopard. And the smallest, from finches, will have only a portrait of one of the tiny birds themselves.

The finch eggs are smaller than pinto beans, and Thomas has to use special brushes with only one or two bristles to paint them. Because of their fragility, she displays and sells them only under protective glass domes.

"I broke one once by touching it with a piece of tissue paper," she said.

"But you can take one of the ostrich or emu eggs and drop it on the floor safely - as long as you've got carpeting," said her husband, Steve, 56, a construction contractor and woodworker who has recently taken to painting cartoon characters on chicken eggshells.

Smith, who is in her 60s, hates to paint, but she will do almost anything else imaginable with an eggshell. She prefers rhea eggs because their shells are white and do not require pre-painting like the dark-shelled emu eggs do.

A lot of Smith's eggs are painstakingly carved.