Kissing Sappho, coffee painting

 

This is my newest painting of Sappho. I've made the painting using only coffee and sugar

The portrait of the poet Sappho

 

The portrait of Sappho, pencil drawing

The poet Sappho and her lyre from Lydia

This is my newest painting of the poet Sappho from the isle of Lesbos and her magic lyre from Lydia (the actual Turkey)

My acrylics on canvas painting of Abanthis playing lyre for Gongyla

Please Abanthis your Sappho calls you:
Won't you take your Lydian lyre and play
Another song to Gongyla while desire still
flutters your heart-strings

for that girl, that beautiful girl: her dresses
clinging makes you shake when you see it, and i'm
happy for the goddess herself once blamed me
Our Lady of Cyprus

This poem written by Sappho has inspired me to make some pencil drawings and the painting above

You can watch me painting in the video below

A talented girl from Sappho's thaisos playing lyre in the sunset

Not one girl, I think, will ever look at the sunlight
of another  time who has such talent as this one does

This words written by Sappho have inspired me to make a painting of a young girl playing lyre while she is watching the sunset

Abanthis singing for Gongyla

Please Abanthis your Sappho calls you:
Won't you take your Lydian lyre and play
Another song to Gongyla while desire still
flutters your heart-strings

for that girl, that beautiful girl: her dresses
clinging makes you shake when you see it, and i'm
happy for the goddess herself once blamed me
Our Lady of Cyprus

This poem written by Sappho has inspired me to make a new drawing

The dacian version of the legend of the Pleiades and the goddess Bendis

This oil on canvas painting is about what the romanians call "sanziene", a dacian legend about 7 young maidens that follow the goddess Bendis like the pleiads follow Artemis. They are immortal eternal virgins like the virgin goddess they follow and they punish men who try to get close to them.
This painting is representing the 7 sisters (Pleiades in greek mythology, sanziene in the dacian mythology), the goddess Bendis for dacians, Diana for romans and Artemis for the greeks and the poet Sappho singing about them (Sappho has written some poems about the Pleiades)
You can watch me painting in the video below

The poem below, written by Sappho more than 2000 years ago has inspired me to paint this

This is my song of maidens dear to me.
Eranna, a slight girl I counted thee,
When first I looked upon thy form and face,
Slim as a reed, and all devoid of grace.
But stately stature, grace and beauty came
Unto thee with the years — O, dost not shame
For this, Eranna, that thy pride hath grown
Therewith? Alas for thee ! I have not known
One beauty ever of more scornful mien,
As though thou wert of all earth's daughters queen!
Mnasidica is comelier, perchance,
Than my Gyrinna — ah, but sweetly rings
Gyrinna's matchless voice ! In rapture-trance
I listen, listen, while Gyrinna sings.
Hero of Gyara is fleet of foot
As fawns, and as light-footed in the dance,
The dance taught by the measures of my lute.
Ever-impassioned Gorgo! — is it strange
That I grow weary of the change on change
Of thine adored ones? — of thy rhapsodies
O'er each new girlfriend, while the old love dies?
Joy to thee, daughter of a princely race,
For thy last dear one! Lie in her embrace —
Till shines a new star on thy raptured eyes!
Fonder of maids thou art, I trow, than she.
The ghost who nightly steal young girls, to be
In Hades of her woeful company.
This is my fair girl-garden: sweet they grow —
Rose, violet, asphodel and lily's snow;
And which the sweetest is, I do not know;
For rosy arms and starry eyes are there.
Honey-sweet voices and cheeks passing fair.
And these shall men, I ween, remember long;
For these shall bloom for ever in my song.

Sappho and her lover and communication, two new paintings

I've made these paintings about love today. You can watch me making them in the videos below. 

The poets Corinna Erinna and Sappho coffee painting

The poets Corinna Erinna and Sappho coffee painting

13.09.2017
19:11



Sappho was the best known female poet in the ancient Greece but not the only one.
By that time there was a culture of the feminine poetry and art and young women and girls were organized in groups  ruled by poets like Sappho were they were writing poems, they were singing in chorus, they were dancing.
Corinna from Tanagra, Boetia was a poet too. She wrote epic poems about the daughters of Minyas, Oedip and Orion and an invocation to  Therpsichore, the muse of dance and chorus. Like Sappho did, Corinna has ruled a group of young maidens.
Corinna has inspired the poet Ovid too and I'm proud to bear her name. The name Corina has her story behind it.
Erinna was one of Sappho's followers.
She has written Distaff, a poem about her childhood friend Baucis who has died shortly after the wedding. Was marriage something unwanted  for Baucis? Erinna died shortly after she has written the poem. She was just 19.
This is my coffee painting of Corinna, Erinna and Sappho.

A girl form Sappho's thaissos on the isle of Lesbos singing

This is my painting of a girl from Sappho's thaissos on the isle of Lesbos, wearing a soft white dress and flowers in her hair, singing next to the Aegean sea, the way I imagine her. Young girls in Sappho's school were singinf, dancing, writing poems, beiing helped to develop their feminine and artistic sides. These girls were priestesses of Aphrodite and they were singing about love, beauty and the feminine in it's essence.

A girl from Sappho's thaissos playing harp on the isle of Lesbos, next to the sea

I've made this thinking about one of the girls the poet Sappho used to teach the art of femininity, imagining she is there, on the isle of Lesbos, next to the Aegean sea, wearing a simple white dress and a violet and rose tiara, singing about love with a harp, her divine voice and inspiration from Aphrodite, singing like a mermaid, hoping someone will hear her over the seas.

Sappho's girls

The poem below, written by Sappho has inspired me to make this ball point pen drawing

This is my song of maidens dear to me.
Eranna, a slight girl I counted thee,
When first I looked upon thy form and face,
Slim as a reed, and all devoid of grace.
But stately stature, grace and beauty came
Unto thee with the years — O, dost not shame
For this, Eranna, that thy pride hath grown
Therewith? Alas for thee ! I have not known
One beauty ever of more scornful mien,
As though thou wert of all earth's daughters queen!
Mnasidica is comelier, perchance,
Than my Gyrinna — ah, but sweetly rings
Gyrinna's matchless voice ! In rapture-trance
I listen, listen, while Gyrinna sings.
Hero of Gyara is fleet of foot
As fawns, and as light-footed in the dance,
The dance taught by the measures of my lute.
Ever-impassioned Gorgo! — is it strange
That I grow weary of the change on change
Of thine adored ones? — of thy rhapsodies
O'er each new girlfriend, while the old love dies?
Joy to thee, daughter of a princely race,
For thy last dear one! Lie in her embrace —
Till shines a new star on thy raptured eyes!
Fonder of maids thou art, I trow, than she.
The ghost who nightly steal young girls, to be
In Hades of her woeful company.
This is my fair girl-garden: sweet they grow —
Rose, violet, asphodel and lily's snow;
And which the sweetest is, I do not know;
For rosy arms and starry eyes are there.
Honey-sweet voices and cheeks passing fair.
And these shall men, I ween, remember long;
For these shall bloom for ever in my song. 

Violet flower, ball point pen drawing

Today I've made a ball point pen drawing of a violet, Sappho's favorite flower.

The portrait of the poet Sappho

The portrait of the poet Sappho, painting

Sappho's rose kissed by Aphrodite's red lips

Sappho's rose kissed by Aphrodite's red lips

23.01.2017
0:17


Sappho's poem "The rose" has inspired me to make this painting of Aphrodite kissing 💋 the king of flowers.
You can read the poem below.

If Zeus1 chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,

He would call to the rose and would royally crown it,

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,

Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it.

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers,

Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair,--

Is the lightning of beauty, that strikes through the bowers

On pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware.

Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose, lifts the cup

To the red lips of Cypris10 invoked for a guest!

Ho, the rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world,

Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,

As they laugh to the Wind as it laughs from the west.

Sappho with her lyre and the Pleiads

Sappho with her lyre and the Pleiades, ball point pen drawing

Sappho's feeling of separation and lack of love

I've painted this on Tuesday, thinking about Sappho and her world of poetry, music, art beauty and the divine feminine under the cult of Aphrodite.
After finishing the painting I've discovered there is a coldness between the two women, like in many of my creations. They seem to be separated, turning their backs on each other, ignoring each other, not communication, standing still next to to the column that further separates them. While Sappho is still turning her shy look to the her, the other girl seems to be so indiferent, looking in the opposite direction.
This painting could be a good illustration for the poem Hymn to Aphrodite, a poem Sappho has written while she was in love with a girl who was not interested in her.

As I sad before I've made may drawings and paintings of two women turning their backs to each other since I was in high-school. I've made these creations feeling rejected by the girls I liked, like Sappho did more than 2000 years ago when she wrote the Hymn to Aphrodite.

Two drawings I've made when I was 15

I've cried many times feeling rejected when I needed to be loved, since I was a high school kid, and all the girls I liked were so cold, turning their backs on me, putting walls of indifference around them.

Mnasidica missing Atthis and Sappho

This is my painting of Mnasidica, one of the followers of Sappho.

I've made this painting being inspired by the poem Sappho has written about her being far away in Lydia(a place that belongs to Turkey today), still missing Atthis who was like a goddess to her and the life they shared in Sappho's thaissos,she can almost see the shadow of Atthis singing and dancing in her mind, she can almost hear the echo of her lyre and divine voce from the past.

Like many other young girls Mnasidica had to leave Sappho's feminity school  to get married and she got married to a rich man who had an important role in that society but even is she was shining like a diva among the lydian women, she was not happy and watching the sea with her sad eyes all she wanted was her desperate scream to be heard but Sappho And Atthis to were far, over the sea.

You can read Sappho's poem below

Atthis, our loved Mnasidica dweels at far-
off Sardis, but she often sends her thoughts
hither, thinking how once we used to love
in the days when she thought thee like a
glorious goddess, and loved thy song the
best. And now she shines among the dames
of Lydia as after sunset the rosy-fingered
moon beside the stars that are about her,
when she spreads her light o'er briny sea
and eke o'er flowery field, while the good
dew lies on the ground and the roses revive
and the dainty anthrysc and the honey-lotus
with all its blooms. And oftentime when
our beloved, wandering abroad, calls to mind
her gentle Atthis, the heart devours her
tender breast with the pain of longing; and
she cries aloud to us to come thither; and
what she says we know full well, thou and I,
for Night, the many-eared, calls it to us
across the dividing sea.

To Atthis, a poem written by Sappho and two ball point pen drawings

These drawings are about the sad story of a girl who had to leave Sappho's thaissos to marry a man who was living somewhere in Sardis. Even if she was shining among the Lydian women she was not happy. She was missing Atthis and the life they shared at Sappho's Thaissos.

To Atthis

Though in Sardis now,
she things of us constantly

and of the life we shared.
She saw you as a goddess
and above all your dancing gave her deep joy.

Now she shines among Lydian women like
the rose-fingered moon
rising after sundown, erasing all

stars around her, and pouring light equally
across the salt sea
and over densely flowered fields

lucent under dew. Her light spreads
on roses and tender thyme
and the blooming honey-lotus.

Often while she wanders she remem-
bers you, gentle Atthis,
and desire eats away at her heart

for us to come.