Inhabiting Time: Bringing Santorini Into the Studio
Oia, Santorini — October 2025
Sometimes it takes a while between realizing something, living it, and integrating it before I can put it into words or experiment with it in my artwork.
When I first entered Galanopoulos Art Gallery in Santorini last October, I was mesmerized by an image of cornflower blue Greek island stairs. I had that inner pull — almost a feeling of electricity — and suddenly I could see how an image could appear weathered and alive, yet remain part of a geometric structure.
It was imperfect. It was the essence of a single moment of captured time. It didn’t feel constrictive or stuck — there was still movement, not in the image, but in the way that the elements of the actual structure photographed will change the longer it lives in the world, altered by everything it comes into contact with.
Small photo prints for my studio from Galanopoulos Art Gallery in Santorini
After collecting a few small canvas reproductions of some of my favorite photographs to bring home to my Seattle art studio, I walked back to my hotel to rest before dinner.
That night I ended up at a restaurant called Karma. When I walked inside, I was greeted by photos from the same photographer as the ones hanging in the gallery. I recognized the compositions and subject matter right away — the emphasis on Cycladic curves and architectural close-ups.
I told the bartender about the serendipity of it all, and he said, “Yes! The photographer owns this restaurant!”
What?! So I just happened to wander into the restaurant owned by the photographer whose work I was so taken with?
It became even cooler when I had dinner, went back to my hotel restaurant for dessert and a nightcap, and slowly started connecting what I had seen to the artwork that I create.
By then I was thinking, “Okay, Universe. I’m paying attention.”
Up until now, I have pretty much kept my distinct styles of artwork separate, weaving back and forth between geometry and more fluid work as I felt called to do so. But seeing the photography at the gallery in Santorini gave me a glimpse in real time of how crumbly, aging textures and geometrically straight or curved lines could mix in a way that felt really good to me.
After some time passed, that experience eventually became the starting point for Inhabiting Time No. 1 and Inhabiting Time No. 2.
These two paintings were an experiment in directly blending those two aspects of my work — fluid movement over texture and structured geometry.
Working with geometry, limestone textural layers, earthy green hues, and water as a method of moving paint over the surface, I had an opportunity to see what it felt like to merge my two visual languages into one.
I slowly built up textured layers and scratched into the line work and paint with the edges of a rock I collected at the beach I visit every weekend.
I created the passing of time with my studio tools.
The paintings are imperfect in the way that the remnants of nature are imperfect when they cause a reaction on a surface.
I wanted to paint like wind, rain, sunlight, and ocean waves make their marks on the earth.
I created my gridlines not with a ruler, but from the point of view of a structure being rebuilt or filled in over time, often imperfectly.
Inhabiting Time No. 1 and Inhabiting Time No. 2 are each 24 x 24 inches and were created in 2026 with acrylic, limestone powder, and texture medium on wood panel.
Notes From The Studio
If you’re drawn to artwork shaped by atmosphere, memory, and the emotional experience of place, I share personal and studio reflections along with early previews of available work through Notes From the Studio.
