The Little Church of Cephalonia 1925

Konstantinos Parthenis painted "The Little Church of Cephalonia" with oil on canvas using a restrained palette of blues, greens, and whites. Look at how the blues swirl in the sky, almost vibrating with the energy of the landscape, clashing with the solid forms of the trees and buildings. I bet Parthenis stood in that landscape and let it all seep into his mind. He had to try and capture its essence, smearing the paint on the canvas, layering thin washes to build up the atmospheric perspective. It is like he is reaching for something just beyond grasp. There's something almost dreamlike in the way the landscape is rendered, the simplified shapes and muted colors giving it a timeless quality, an echo of other paintings. Think of Cezanne, or even some of the early Cubists. Parthenis might have been thinking about them, wrestling with the same problems of representation and abstraction. It's all part of an ongoing conversation, this painting thing, where we borrow and steal and transform each other's ideas across time.