10 colored drawings for the poems of George Seferis 1965

Yiannis Moralis made these coloured drawings for the poems of George Seferis, with crayon on paper. The blue grounds everything, and the browns and blacks sit on top of it – a bit like when you’re trying to describe a feeling, but all you’ve got is a blunt crayon. The marks are simple, but they add up to this weird dreamscape of landscape and classical architecture. I keep looking at the shape in the top right - it’s like a tree growing in the sky, or maybe a really cool mask. The marks are repeated throughout the image - the squiggly lines and curves. This is important because it’s kind of like Moralis is trying to get at something that’s just beyond language, but the poem is there too, somewhere. It reminds me of Cy Twombly's drawings, these scratchy, searching lines that build up into something both familiar and totally strange. It’s like art isn’t about answers, but about trying to find the right questions.