a year of self portraits Painting

While Christos Tsimaris‘ paintings are primarily portraits and figurative pictures. However, his aim is not to represent a beautiful image of a person, an individual, rather it’s an ongoing exploration of the process itself; how the painting is created in relation to its structure, composition, colour and mark making. Like many figurative painters of his generation it’s impossible for Tsimaris to avoid the looming shadows of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, both of which have dominated the figurative world, their paintings both evocative, emotional and full of existential angst. However Tsimaris is finding his own path into the light, away from these titans of 20th Century art, his work constantly seeking to go beyond the Freudian discipline of representational art and the more gestural expressionism that we are familiar with in the figurative paintings of Bacon. Often returning to himself Tsimaris spends endless hours honing his craft infront of a mirror in the studio, drawing, painting, adding layers of colour only to pare them back, the search for a new form of expression willing him forward, to create a new mode of expressing the humanity within people. Accidents and mishaps play a large part in his process, often layering and scraping, his palette reduced to tonal impressions, his is ready to paint with acrylic over oils an un orthodox way to paint.This playful investigation into the qualities of paint and the act of mark making are what give these paintings their energy and vibrancy. They are not still, always moving. Never certain. Here’s what he has to say about his work: I often spend endless hours in front of the mirror painting or drawing intensively myself, as I am, to quote Lucian Freud, ‘permanently available’. Quite often I use photographs that inspire me for some reason, but I won’t necessarily transfer the image directly to the canvas – they are merely the vessel that will initiate or ignite a painting, with the painting developing in to something independent of any emotional weight that may have triggered the initial reaction . My main aim is to explore how the painting is created in terms of structure, composition, colour and mark making, rather than focussing solely on what it represents.