I was thinking this morning of all the artists who have influenced by aesthetic sense over the decades – and Giorgos Varlamos came to mind. Born in 1922, he died in 2013. We visited his gallery in Athens during our 1970 Landrover trip to Greece – and bought a print of the image above, Hunters in the Woods. It’s still in the summerhouse.
A highlight of the visit was Giorgos taking us through his photograph albums, almost exclusively black-and-white images. An inspiration for my later albums, largely created in Tessa Fantoni’s albums, bought from her store in Clapham, though my father had kept albums for many decades prior.
I remember talking to Giorgos about how he had developed the image, which was printed from a woodcut, if I remember correctly. He said he had crunched up newspapers as a visual reference during the process, so that the cross-hatchings had an echo of newsprint – and therefore of meaning.
Not sure I approve of the subject matter these days, having sold my two shotguns some time before we went Greece-wards. Having once had some “pet” pheasants, which I had discovered nesting in a hedge at Moses Farm House, near Lurgashall, I had earnestly foresworn shooting pheasants. But then, some years later, shot one on Little Rissington airfield, in large part because she took me by surprise. Still feel a pang of regret.
