For more than fifty years I have travelled and worked in Greece. My love for the country was already established during history lessons as a high school student, and my first Greek friends were political refugees from Greece during the years of the military junta. As a young man I hitchhiked three times through Europe from Sweden to Greece, back and forth, and walked and lived around the country, on the mainland, among the islands of the Cyclades, on the Dodecanese Islands and on Crete. The first time I crossed the border from the former Yugoslavia was in July 1972.
For the past twenty-five years I have lived and painted for a few months in spring and autumn every year around Greece. Most of the time I have spent down in the Mani in the Peloponnese, south of Kalamata, but I have also lived in several of the Ionian Islands, from Corfu in the north to Kythera in the south. During these years I have created over two thousand paintings.
In addition to countless exhibitions with Greece as a "theme" in Sweden, I have in recent years also had several exhibitions in Greece. My travels are also described on many occasions in Swedish magazines, like HELLENIKA, as well as in the Greek newspaper Ελευθερία (Freedom).
Peter Sternäng
Artwork
