Abstract Acropolis

This painting was an experiment in mixed media -- watercolor and oil pastels. It is a view of the Acropolis from one of my favorite vantage points -- looking up over Hadrian's Library in downtown Athens. I first did an underpainting in watercolor, then made it more abstract, while echoing underlying values, via slashes of oil pastel. While this oil-and-water take on the Acropolis may look like a tangle up close,  if you stand back and squint a little, the walls and houses of the Plaka will emerge. The painting evokes for me the profound cultural coherence of Greece which contains, like a magnetic field, complexity, contention, and emotion.