This painting is my personal favorite. And my lucky charm. One of those things that may not be perfect but for some reason you hold closer to your heart than anything else.
Although she looks like a pretty simple and straightforward portrait, her creation took longer than a month working on her systematically every night.
The challenge was to combine my personal facial features at late childhood / early adolesence with native african characteristics. Then through her eyes and mouth expression to make her look older than her age - in her eyes you can see the reflection of fires.
The inspiration for this painting came during the Embola breakout. The painting however became tha cover of a greek newspaper (Athens Voice) during their campaing called INVISIBLE PEOPLE in favor of 200,000 children and young adults that were born or grew up in Greece but were not entitled to Greek nationality.
Fortunately the law changed shortly after, confirming my prejudice that my little daughter is indeed a lucky charm!
In the photo below my baby, me and the exhibition curator.
The cover
