Talea Tambakos

Echoes of Home

'Echoes of Home' is a self-reflective piece of Talea’s memories, nostalgia for childhood, and a longing for the happiness she felt while visiting her family’s home in Spathes, Greece.

“Echoes of Home is a self-reflective piece of my memories. Constantly in a state of nostalgia, my childhood was a time of vibrancy; depicting myself as a young child reflects this emotional bliss. I am genuinely happy in this image, smiling for the sake of happiness and not for the simplicity of the picture. My father’s childhood home in Spathes, Greece, which I first visited in 2023, became a location that reintroduced these childhood emotions. I felt a sense of belonging in a place I had never been before, I felt like a child again; my portrait is behind the landscape surrounding this area. The colour palette and medium were inspired by decorative ceiling paintings at a Greek church, which stylistically reminded me of the smooth appearance of gouache. The background is inspired by one of my favourite musical albums, containing an oil painting by a contemporary, surrealist artist, Stephen Gibb, relating to my music taste and preference for surrealist art in history. Another layer is that the sun and moon on either side metaphorically communicate my roots in both Greece and Canada. To further these sides, at the left is a road sign seen arriving in the Greek village, and the flowers at the right are honeysuckle flowers, which used to grow in my backyard in Toronto. The flowers become reflective of memories I have with my grandmother, sitting in the yard and pulling the center of the flowers out to taste their sweet nectar. These times spent with my father’s mother were when I felt closest to my Greek background without having visited before, but representationally still rooted in my life in Canada, resembling the Ontario logo. ”