“Marginally human”/ Works 2012-2019

Nikos Moschos reminds us that the primary role of artists is to represent to the world pictures that originate from a deep and sustained conversation with their inner selves and with others. To succeed, in the first instance, the conversation with oneself should not be a self-absorbed solipsistic lyric but rather offer a structured view of the world that is constructed from a personalized creation of myth and cosmos that is consistent and accessible for its repetition of line, color, form, mass, and icon.

To do that the artist has to have acquired the necessary tools. These are of course technical and exhibited in brush and palette and through techniques developed over centuries of painting. Technique is a foundation, and Nikos is a master of these. The brush and canvas are merely tools, and he wields them with confidence, as if he was borne with a brush at the end of his hand. What informs his art is his deep and broad understanding of the history of art, of the great artists who down through the centuries have carried on conversations about the subjects of art: the body (eye, face, torso, foot, finger), the material world (machine, wheel, furniture, buildings, cities, fumes, hat and crown, clattering sound), and nature (clouds, seas, cliffs, swallows, mountains, water, light). These all appear in Nikos’ paintings. They are mixed in unpredictable ways. Yet they reach out and grab the viewer’s attention. They demand space and raise questions. And they admit to an understanding because, from one painting to another, they are part of an extended conversation that Nikos is having with himself and with his audience.

When I first saw his work exhibited I was drawn to it. It wrenched me and I wanted to understand what was its source. As I have come to know Nikos and had the pleasure to visit him in his studio, I have learned from him about the sources of his art. His openness to my curiosity has enriched my appreciation of his inner meanings and his dialogue with the world around him. It has helped me understand also his relationship to art from the past, whether fragments from the Parthenon or images from the Neue Sachlichkeit of the interwar years. Never derivative, Nikos’ original paintings grapple with meaning in our contemporary world. Their visceral images grip our imagination because they are profoundly familiar without being immediately accessible. They suggest familiarity without being trite. I think they attract an audience because they speak to the contradictions and challenges of our personal lives in world that is increasingly out of control.

James Wright
Former Director, American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Εmeritus Professor, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College,
Bryn Mawr, PA, USA