16 Feb 08 by fotini hamidieli
This is a watercolor which I specifically did for an exhibition.I had my photo taken and I wanted to show the conversation between me and my other self.Of course boxes always hold secrects.

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Passing

I' m interested in combining drawing and painting so in this work I stressed the use of line. This image is based on a poem.

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18 Feb 08 11:52

Hello, Fotini, welcome aboard! I wright in English so that others can pop in the conversation too. I am so glad to find a new Greek person in ArtProcess, I didn't introduce to myself.

Drawing, i.e line, is one of the most important elements of painting in my mind too. I think that line and texture are the basis. One can apply wichever combination of colours, that will of course lead the work to different expressive paths, but the essence of it all lies in drawing. In the way forms meet and interact with each other. Whether two or three dimentional.

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18 Feb 08 12:10

maria thanks for the wellcoming i live in asmall city it's difficult to find people to talk to about art when i need to, so artprocess is great .

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15 May 09 19:31

By chance I ran into this painting of Fotini and then found Maria’s comment on drawing which sounds very strange to me. I know that we had this discussion on drawing very often here but I have forgotten when and where. So let’s start again. A drawing is a drawing in the first place, done with pencils, pens, needles or charcoal. It’s a clearly separated section of art. Another clearly separated section is painting done with brushes or knifes and the technique is absolutely different. Drawing is an act of abstraction. The basis of drawing is following the outline of an object. This is what sculptors do, at least as I have learned it. The tension in the outlines shows what’s between them so there is no need of shadowing it with any kind of hatching. For example, if a sculptor draws a globe it will be a mere circle that contains everything that has to be said about a globe. Even when drawing the surface of an object you always have to look for borders: where does one hue begin and where does it end to put your line at the exact place.

Painting in the opposite deals with surfaces. In this painting is closer to nature as drawing. It’s less abstract then. In other words drawing always beginns with an outline whether it is a real outline or in the middle of an object. Painting compared with this is concentrated on surface areas. So drawing can be described as coming from the outline and going to the center while painting is growing from the center in the direction of the outline.

In nature there are no lines, not really, everything is surface. So a line is an abstraction what in the literal sense of the word means that everything that is not absolutely necessary is pulled away. A painter’s eye on the other hand pulles nothing away from what she sees but tries to get it all, the whole surface and transforms it into hues of paint. It’s not looking for an abstraction but for a metaphor.

Some fifty years ago I already had this kind of discussion with our beloved friend Hillel. It was about Reaissance = construction = line and Baroque = description = surface. There are other periods in art history that can be used to describe this contradiction. Sometimes it occurs in one and the same period like in the ninetieth century. For example Blake and Turner. Blake, whom I loathe, was about 25 years older than Turner, whom I adore, but nevertheless they were contemporary. Blake is called a painter but what he actually did were coloured drawings while Turner was a painter at it’s best. Try to put a line into one of his magnificent paintings and you will fail. One can start with the greeks, they had drawers who did vase „painting“ and painters that did paintings that are echoed in Pompeian murals. In Egypt you find drawings like in the tombs and paintings as on those wonderful lively mummy portraits of the latest (hellenistic) period. It seems to be like tide. You have draftmen and then painters and then draftmen again followed by painters and so on and so forth. Your favorite painter Maria, Goya, was both a powerful painter and an accurate draftsman as well. This is rare.

Well of course you need some drawing as a painter. But these lines are raw sketched outlines just for to know where to stop. But that’s not exactly drawing. It’s marking. Okay I admit that this is my very personal view but you will understand that I can only talk about what I think. Drawing for me is somewhat bloodless while painting is a very erotic bath in paint. Oh oh, I can already hear the outcry aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgggggg but nevertheless this is what I think and what is the basis of what I do. We can continue on this when your newest paintings are to be seen in a higher resolution. And for I love you Maria this will be a hard fight.

To end with I have to say that Fotini’s painting in my eyes is just what she has said: a combination of drawing and painting with NONE of them being superior. That’s interesting and well done.

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17 May 09 18:25

Hanjo knows (no pun intended) how to draw me into a discussion (even if I am depressed as hell) and I see he's in a mood for talk. I'm not sure what Maria had to say on the topic (direct me to it) and perhaps I'll be repeating something she said, although like with everyone else sometimes we agree and sometimes we don't.

The concept that drawing is only about line and is done in a medium like graphite, charcoal, pen and ink is something I just can't agree with. According to the dictionary, curators and art institutes that does seem to be the case however ink and watercplour washes and recently oil stick and magic markers are acceptable media for drawing even if their results do cross the contour v.s. mass borderline.

For me drawing is pure thought, It's how artists tackle the measurement of their visual experience including the weighing of hue and tone. Maybe confusion arises because in bygone times when artists painted huge murals and elaborate cathedral ceilings the separation between the initial sketches (drawings in pencil, charcoal or oils) and the finished life sized cartoons, ie. line drawings to be transferred to the prepared surface and the paintings themselves were viewed as two distinct activities. This firmly established difference between drawing and painting has been challenged in our time given our experience of recent art history. From the impressionists to the abstract expressionists, artists have drawn colour directly with brushes and knives onto their canvases and that spontaneous quality is a hallmark of much contemporary painterly work.

The whole idea that drawing is just about the medium used, seems to me to be quite absurd. In what way is an intricate black and white or monochromatic tonal work in pencil, charcoal or conte different from painting? I know, NO PAINT therefore no painting. I can accept that concept based on the technicality but not the reverse... that a painting drawn directly with brush and paint is less of a drawing because of paint and/or colour.

Great artists have always been great draughtsmen as well as painters and/or sculptors. They drew their drawings and continued the drawing process when they painted or sculpted. I can't think of one example who was both a lame draughtsman and painter or sculptor. Just because we can use various techniques like "Photoshop" today to determine outlines (nothing so new, camera obscura has long existed and certainly Vermeer used it to determine outlines yet he remains in my mind a great painter and draughtsman). There's no shame in using shortcuts to determine naturalistic outlines if that's what you're into. (I prefer a more holistic, overall drawn approach) Each one of those little squares that make up a Chuck Close painting have to be drawn and painted or drawn with paint. No matter how you Hanjo, Isolate areas and contours in your figurative works, those areas have to be drawn with paint and if it wasn't for your proficiency as a draughtsman, the end results wouldn't be as successful as they are.

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18 May 09 10:24

Indeed the trick worked this time. I’m so proud of me.

Well, it was my fault to try to make something objective what actually is a highly subjective thing. In a way ... and there Hillel’s absolutely right ... one can see everything as a drawing. It’s not only that one can draw with everything, one can use a stick to draw in the sand, you can use blood on your fingertip, you can draw even with your tongue on your lovers belly or with a lipstick on the mirror to say thank you for that and so on and so forth. When painting our hand makes kind of linear strokes with a brush or a spatula so in the end one can define the act of painting itself as drawing. The only method to avoid that is taking a bucket of paint, turn it upside down and splash the whole paint on the canvas. But this would be a bit difficult to call „painting“ in the narrow sense of the word. Hillel is also right ... and maybe this was what Maria was refering to and what I misunderstood ... when saying that without the training of drawing one can hardly do proper painting. It’s drawing that sharpens our eyes. The discipline we need to distinguish one thing from another, the different shapes of forms, the different hues of colour or the colours in general, all this comes from the training we get through drawing. So I could write an essay on the benefits from drawing as well so everyone would say oh, what happens now?

What I have in mind is a quite simple thing. And it is not objective as said at the beginning. So one can hardly discuss it with using sophisticated arguments. I am refering to the attitude you work with. It’s the difference between discipline and playing or the difference between thinking and feeling, between cold and warm. Do you hand yourself over to the paint and have a conversation with it or do you execute a picture you have in mind. Don’t take me wrong, I know that even when bathing in paint you have to controll what you do. So please do not become over-subtle again. From the view I want to show you one could say that even drawings could be „painted“ like Jenny Saville ones. Even Hillel’s wonderful Rabbi portraits seem to be a kind of painted drawings to me. Or take the work of Cy Twombley as an example. Are they drawings, are they paintings? I would say paintings.
So the distinction in drawings and paintings for me is an emotional thing one can hardly verify in terms of art theory. When looking at paitings my reaction is instinctive: this is a drawn one and that a painted one. And even in looking at drawings I make this distinction for indeed there are „painted“ drawings as said above. My distinction is emotional and irrational and it’s obvious that I prefer the „painted“ version. Maybe it simply has to do with my own developement as an artist. My „proficiency as a draughtsman“ ... as Hillel has put it ... caused a particular awe when discovering the power of painting. I got kind of over exited. Painting gave to me what I could never achieve with drawing alone. So that’s why I am a „painting“ freak.
Okay, I guess no one will follow or understand me so I will become very very sad and all of you have to come and console me.

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19 May 09 11:25

Now, now we don't want anybody feeling sad but even more so I don't like thinking of Hillel being depressed and hope that he will get his ''kefi'' back quite soon.''Kefi''although not able to translate it ,it widely means a good feeling for life.

Well art theory is fine but when it comes down to it and when I find myself in front of the bare surface I use what I need .If I feel the need of lines,their nerve ,edginess,want to see them flowing on my surface in whatever material or way ,it is them that I use without consciously thinking about it.But when I need to immerse myself in color it is color that I use.Before placing color and start building forms I definetly need lines to act as my foundation.

Turner used to let one of his nails grow longer.Maybe he used it to scratch out lines.

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19 May 09 20:15

My comment on this is going to be very short for no other reason than that of being extremely tired and haven’t had anything to eat for twelve hours or so. Still, I cannot but interfere in this (well, Hanjo does know our weak points) to say that Hillel made a very successful summary of what I call drawing, in just one sentence: the weighing of hue and tone . To this I want to add that drawing, as I define it, refers to the whole organizing of the pictorial surface as far as composition and whatever hue or colour values are concerned. It is simply not merely about line. Cezanne for example is full of threads that connect his elements without being actual lines neither do they define contours. They can consist of one brushstroke here one there that continue one another visually and lead the eye into a harmonious journey through the picture. This is also what the old masters used to do when they had to organize a large mural for example. A leg at the bottom, right corner might be related to a brushstroke of light on an arm at the top left corner, which might be metres away but still makes a visual axis and so on and so forth. Sorry for this attempt to summarize this big matter but I really need some food, some alcohol and my sofa now.

Swimming in yellow
Swimming in yellow
Swimming in yellow

This figure is telling her story sourrounded by the particular colour, yellow, and symbolic images.

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23 Feb 08 18:00

Although there is so much yellow it is not overpowering because of the figure. It's visually very satisfying and I like the concept (from medieval times?) of showing different phases of a life in one painting. It is my favourite in the portfolio.
Anne

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23 Feb 08 20:37

thanks for your comment yellow is acolour which has negative conotation for me that's why iused it i don't know if it's medieval art i was thinking about or subconsciously greek byzantine

Figure in motion
Figure in motion
Figure in motion

Just a study of the figure in motion. Part of a series.

Figure
Figure
Figure

Just a small drawing, part of a series.

Blue dress
Blue dress
Blue dress

I like working by preparing my surface with layers of thin paper and then start working on my subject. I' m interested in the variety of textures I can achieve with this technique.

Pain
Pain
Pain

I like working by preparing my surface with layers of thin paper and then start working on my subject. I' m interested in the variety of textures I can achieve with this technique.

Pain
Pain
Pain

I like working by preparing my surface with layers of thin paper and then start working on my subject. I' m interested in the variety of textures I can achieve with this technique.

Waiting
Waiting
Waiting

I like working by preparing my surface with layers of thin paper and then start working on my subject. I' m interested in the variety of textures I can achieve with this technique.

green
green
green

certain colours have meanings for me inthis work part of aseries i painted women who are motionless and seemed to be waiting for something

Figure
Figure
Figure

These drawings are part of a large series and were done rather compulsively, I' couldn't think but I kept drawing them.

Figure
Figure
Figure

These drawings are part of a large series and were done rather compulsively, I' couldn't think but I kept drawing them.

Figure
Figure
Figure

These drawings are part of a large series and were done rather compulsively, I' couldn't think but I kept drawing them.

Figure
Figure
Figure

For the past year I' ve been using 2 canvases to make up one work. I don't know where this is going but I' ve always been fascinated by the idea of tryptichs.

Secret garden
Secret garden
Secret garden

For the past I' ve been using 2 canvases to make up one work. I don't know where this is going but I've always been fascinated by the idea of religious tryptichs.

mirror
mirror
mirror

Lately I've been interested in the idea of a figure duplicating itself in a mirror

blue figure
blue figure
blue figure

I just wanted the figure to become part of the backround

nude
nude
nude

watching the shapes created by the human body

a portrait
a portrait
a portrait

mixed media

figure
figure
figure

drawing

figure with bird
figure with bird
figure with bird

I wanted to make this yellow work

children
children
children

a 15 year old boy was shot dead on Saturday for no reason at all. the country is burning.i wonder what will ease the pain

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08 Dec 08 20:25

To add to Fotini's comment. The boy was shot by the police.

trying to forget
trying to forget
trying to forget

i want to limit the figurative elements in my work

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13 Jan 09 20:24

i think i got it better this time, thanks for your help

woman with white dress
woman with white dress
woman with white dress

this painting came about at the end of summer strangely enough in a very easy birth

a face
a face
a face

the human face as a map of marks,lines spots of color...

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26 Feb 09 21:36

Fotini, that’s an interesting step you made. I’m very curious what comes out of this. The photo should be a bit more precise but nevertheless it looks promising.

a conversation
a conversation
a conversation

i was interested in the dialogue of the shapes ,color and faces

a face
a face
a face

when I am working on something kind of new I don't like to put into words what it is I am doing

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16 Mar 09 19:24

Your work has been undergoing some kind of change of late and it's been interesting to watch your evolution... this one's lovely.

portrait
portrait
portrait

still working on the hman head

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22 Mar 09 17:38

Am I right that there is something wrong with the solution? I suppose that the painting isn’t as soft in it’s appearance as it looks on this image. So I would ask you the favour of chosing either a higher resolution, say a little bit over 150 kb, or try to shoot a more precise photograph. But as said I guess it’s the resolution of the upload. I mean it’s a pity that one cannot clearly see what you have done.

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22 Mar 09 18:19

i will get some help and try again.i am not too familiar with the computer

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22 Mar 09 18:44

It is a problem Fotini and the reason I haven't made comment on many of your works although they look very interesting. The images are of low resolution and that's frustrating for the viewer. I think the problem may be that you're shooting low resolution, small postcard size images with your digital camera. Even though you can only upload images of 150 kbs. here try taking your pictures with the camera set to "large" format. You can reduce the file size later with any photo application on your computer (your camera probably came with a cd containing one). Or there are many very simple freeware applications available for Mac or PC. "Image Tricks" for example is very easy to download and use. Just Google it and go to their home site.
By the way this also looks like a very interesting painting, I look forward to seeing it more clearly.

among butterflies
among butterflies
among butterflies

Ifeel like Itake one step forward and then back again

awakening
awakening
awakening

this is a piece I did 5 years ago and looking at it again today it seems like it has things I am still trying for but sometimes I loose on the way

naked
naked
naked

part of a series

an offer
an offer
an offer

a drawing with color?

woman with hat
woman with hat
woman with hat

part of a large series of self portraits with a hat I did as a student in 1978

woman with bird
woman with bird
woman with bird

drawing

a portrait
a portrait
a portrait

I am looking at faces again

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27 May 09 20:09

In November in my exhibition a social science proffesor looking at my work commented that my figures seem like females who are trapped in a closed environment,a provincial environment.The comment bothered me a lot ,perhaps he hit too close to home.I don't feel comfortable when people associate my work with me personally, my life,and it is done quite often.I wish they would just look at what I am doing to make up the image.When I am reminded what a great impact our surroundings have on our work it is at the same time frightening and enchanting.Anyway that comment must have been working inside my head as I find myself interested once again in the expression on women's faces

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29 May 09 07:28

Fotini, what would our work be if it didn't reflect ourselves? Where would everything come from if not from personal experience? Even when we illude ourselves that all we think about is form and paint and such. These are only the means to get to expression. I think that if this person got access to deep thoughts of yours through your work you should feel proud of your work's quality.

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30 May 09 18:49

Ofcourse any time my work evokes a reaction from the viewer I feel satisfied that I was able to communicate.Even more so when other women see themselves in my work.Just today I run into a friend whom I had lost for two years and she confided that she had sunk into dark depths but in that journey she had a painting of mine, she had bought a very short time before this darkness.The painting depicts a woman who has let herself go ,very passive but serene at the same time.This painting my friend looked at all the time she was going through the rough period ,and she thought of me.I know exactly where she has been and glad to have accompanied her in a way.
When strangers look at our work sometimes they are able to see through some things and they can touch painful areas.

a map
a map
a map

focusing on the face ,looking at it as a map of emotions

she has a butterfly
she has a butterfly
she has a butterfly

The face for me is a map of emotions and I have started to bring it forward and closer to the viewer

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09 Nov 09 20:35

This looks very interesting. If only you could find a way to improve the quality of the uploaded images... Or AP could find a way to host larger files...

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13 Nov 09 12:25

Fotini, it just occured to me, will you be participating in the EETE show on the human figure in December in Athens? If so we could meet!

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13 Nov 09 15:23

Unfortunately I am not a memberof EETE so I did not know about this show,maybe I will make it there to see it anyway or at some point you may come up to Thessaloniki

the yellow ribbon
the yellow ribbon
the yellow ribbon

on some of the ancient Greek tombstones in Vergina there is painted on the facade of the tombstone a simple red ribbon which is tied.I find the image very moving .To tie things up ,to be tied to,to be tangled in....an umbiblical cord

a portrait-a map
a portrait-a map
a portrait-a map

lately I am focusing on the face ,expressions ,emotions

falling
falling
falling

part of a new series on paper

the woods
the woods
the woods

drawing.It is difficult for me to talk about the content.I was just thinking of a black mass made up of lines,leading up to a point ,like a volcanoe.the face was not a first consideration,nor the trees or the color but at some point they ''had'' to be there

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15 Feb 12 20:11

Fotini it's a beautiful and deeply sensitive work, however we need you to write more that just the word "Drawing" about the piece. Please consider yourself at an exhibition of your art, and a fellow artist whom you trust and admire asks you about this particular artwork. A response of it's a drawing is a little cold and offhand when it's obvious how much of your soul is present there. ArtProcess is really about discussion between artists. If you trust us with a lead into what drove you to arrive at this elegant and lyrical resolution, you would certainly get more feedback than the silence of it's a drawing. In doing so, you'll also be helping a lot with the ap project, as we sorely need artists like you willing to generate discussion with their peers. Many thanks, jp.

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16 Feb 12 06:40

you are right JP ,but for some works it is even more difficult to talk about

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17 Feb 12 01:14

Yo JP! Are you having fun there big fella? You've done a real sharp job of updating AP. It has a very clean and smart look and there are many nice changes, all graphically very tasty. And I also see that you've found the wherewithal to once again try to get all the mute artists blathering away (that was always the most frustrating thing for me). You must realize by now that it just ain't gonna happen. After all is said and done they are visual artists for a reason and beyond describing a work as a "drawing" I doubt there are words they could summon to describe the convoluted mental process that brings a work to fruition.

Nice work Fotini.

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17 Feb 12 22:57

When I ask all you artists to talk about your work, I don't mean write a thesis - leave that to the art historians in due time. Fotini graciously (despite my being a nuisance) modified the description for her work, and in a few extra words has succeeded in opening a door onto, what is basically the core meaning of this site, the process of how this piece came into being. I find it extremely interesting that the artist should begin with an abstract idea of "a black mass made up of lines, leading up to a point", and in it's execution then transforms into both a landscape and a portrait. From an initial potentially dour and hard idea, she has diffused the destruction of this volcano to vaporize into the elegant and airy self-conscious gaze of a confident young woman. The group of trees and figures add a nonchalance that is simply a touch of magic, and renders this (in my view) an important and successful work.

Many thanks to you Hillel for your kind comments on the site changes - I had begun to wonder if anyone would notice. Regarding your moot point of trying to extract the artist's convoluted mental process - this would be a highly-prized secondary motive, the primary one being to simply ask the artist to outline the precepts for the work and what causality occurred in arriving at it's completion. If Fontini rendered this in such few simple sentences, I don't think it's too much for me to ask, or beyond the capacity her fellow artists to follow suit.

portrait
portrait
portrait

this is the first of a series ,I've gone back to using charcoal an ink,I wanted empty areas as opposed to concetrated ones.

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12 Jun 12 08:09

I appreciate the freshness of the graphic sign, his fluency and expressiveness.
The stain of ultramarine blue in addition to creating a center of attention adds depth to the face is glimpsed behind the hand.
Love this piece.

nude
nude
nude

this is also part of a series I've been working on recently where I'm trying to explore contrasts of line and flowing color,empty and concetrated areas and the figure to provide the setting

waking while the peacock is watching
waking while the peacock is watching
waking while the peacock is watching

the subject has an immediate connection to a recent hospital experience.I want the figue covered by the big mass

body
body
body

I've been trying to ''break'' the body up in a mass of marks-not working always but this result is ok

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31 Mar 12 14:48

Your explorations with the figure are always interesting Fotini - I'd like to see your use of that etched depth of black much more. I'd like to see what would happen if it becomes the predominant feature of your representation, with the delicacy of the liquid washes pushed back to a role of lesser importance.

figure
figure
figure

I am using the form of the body as an excuse to pull lines

time moth
time moth
time moth

working on memory

whisper
whisper
whisper

working on memory

figure
figure
figure

there is some ollage here ,with monoprints,lots of charoal,I love lines

in the woods
in the woods
in the woods

have been doing some monoprints latelyusing different ut out shapes in ombination with some arved surfaes

in the woods
in the woods
in the woods

this is a similar idea with the one published in the studio log

figure with flowers
figure with flowers
figure with flowers

i wanted the figure to mostly recede into darkness and contrast it with more intense colors

portrait
portrait
portrait

collage and acrylic on hardboard

flowers and insects
flowers and insects
flowers and insects

this is from a series i did in the summer when i decided to go back to simply painting flowers and then it started gettting dark