Page 65 - Maxim_Painting_Monograph

Ancient Battle, acrylic on canvas, 2022
This painter has a soul that sees everything “very good”. Even many criminals, he says, were once good. So, as we see the fierce battle and bloodshed, where everyone is running, jumping, hitting, as if dancing, we perceive the painting as an allegory of the struggle for survival where one sees LIFE as the eventual winner, and not the death and darkness and blackness of war which easily begins but hardly ends as a bloodthirsty and all-devouring death. Where does this eter- nal-movement and vitality come from? For us it does not come from elsewhere, but from the Christian ontology of the Future age. Behind the giant warlord who brings down his sword with violence, we see the anger against evil and against the old man within us. An appeal to tame our bad selves. — Stamatis Skliris
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