acrylic paint on dark grey-green Taygetos stone ca 12 x 30 cm
Pic
About
Anna Poelstra Traga is a
contemporary realist painter who:
- paints oil paintings of landscapes
- paints watercolor paintings of landscapes
- paints portraits
- paints byzantine icons
- makes pen and ink drawings
- draws archaeological illustrations
- teaches art workshops
- takes commissions
Biography
Born in the Netherlands. Art, history and travelling have been my lifelong passions.
I have a
B.A. in Egyptology from State University of Groningen. During my studies in
Cairo with a scholarship from the Arab Republic of Egypt I took the opportunity
to travel extensively in Egypt. I have been a member of the excavation teams of
the Brooklyn Museum in Luxor and I acted
as tour guide with groups of Dutch tourists.
After I met
Lord William Taylour, a British archeologist well known for his work on Mycenae,
the focus of my interest shifted to Greece. Until his death in 1989, I
travelled every summer in the company of Lord William through Europe, the
Balkans and Greece. As a member of Lord
William’s expedition team in the Archeological Museum of Nauplia I learned to
draw archeological objects.
Since 1985
I live in Greece, where I got married to my Greek husband Panagiotis, with whom I have a son Spyros Tragas, who now studies in Groningen, the Netherlands. For more than
twenty years I lived in the closed community
of the little village of Afissou, Laconia, working in the coffee-house of my
husband and in the orange- and olive groves of the family. A few years ago I moved to Sparta.
In 1996 I
remembered my love and talent for painting and since then I’ve spent all my
time painting. I’ve devoted myself to painting the many different aspects of
rural life and landscape in Laconia. I
find my inspiration in what I’ve grown accustomed to call “ the garden
of Menelaos ”: the by Mount Taygetos dominated
Laconian landscape around Sparta in rural Peloponnese, with donkeys and sheep, olive groves and olive-picking farmers, the Menelaion, temple to
Helen and her husband Menelaos, Mystras, with a fortress and castle built by
Frankish crusader knights and with many Byzantine churches with well-preserved wall
paintings and last, but not least the ruins
of once mighty Sparta.
I painted my first oil
portrait of my namesake grandmother when
I was seventeen; it still adorns one of the walls in the house of my mother. I
prefer to use oil paints when I paint a portrait because I find that it
provides me with the means to achieve a near lifelike result.
I work from photos which
gives me the opportunity to work on the portrait as often and as long as I feel
necessary. I am happy to take
commissions.
When I visit my
homeland Groningen in the Netherlands I always feel the need to paint the beautiful landscape, but for lack of time I usually have
to be contented with taking photographs which I work from later on in my
studio. I feel that watercolor is the ideal medium for painting the
water-dominated landscape.
Apart from
being a “writer of life” or zographos,
which is the Greek word for painter, I am also a “writer of images” or
eikonographos, in its Anglicized form iconographer. I paint Byzantine icons. The
orthodox believe that the icon plays a role in the salvation of man. They
believe that man was created in the image of God but that man allowed that
image, and with it the world, to be corrupted. When God assumed a fully human
nature without ceasing to be fully God He thereby restored the image. Venerating
an icon or image of Christ, which is the affirmation of the reconciliation of
the human and the divine, the orthodox believe
that they are enabled to
contemplate the person who is the model for their theosis or union with God. Realism in byzantine iconography is absent,
because it would merely reproduce the likeness of the world in a state of
corruption. The way in which the themes
are depicted is standardized, since the purpose of an image is not to display
artistic originality but to reveal the subject's deeper, immutable meaning.
For a great number of
years I have been working on a freelance basis for the Ministry of Culture of Greece
drawing pottery excavated in Laconia at different sites and from different
periods.
Since 2006
I have been conducting courses in oil painting.
I have
taken part in several group exhibitions in the Netherlands as well as in
Greece. In December 2011 I had my first solo exhibition in the Cultural Center
of Sparta which was a great success.
Currently I
am working on a new series of paintings in which water plays the leading role.
Contact
E-mail
annapoelstratraga@gmail.com
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/anna.poelstratraga
Address
Ton 118 8, Sparti, Lakonia, Greece
Phone
Home: 30 2731026791
Mobile: 30 6977974721
Fine Art America
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/anna-poelstra-traga.html
Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/annapoelstratraga
Byzantine church of saint Dimitrios, Mystras
The castle
on top of the hill at an altitude of 620 m. was built in 1249 by the greatest
of all Frankish princes, William II of Villehardouin. William was a “second generation “crusader knight : he was
born in Kalamata the second son of Geoffrey of Villehardouin, who had taken the
cross in the fourth crusade . He spoke both French and Greek. Somewhere I read
that prince William
made a point of spending every Spring in Mystras, because he loved
the many flowers that decorate
the hill in that period. In 1261 the
Frankish castle and palace were ceded to
the Greeks. Because of the ongoing
hostilities between Franks , Greeks , Albanian tribes and Turkish mercenaries the population
living in the Lacedaemonian plain
flocked to the better defendable hill side of Mystras. In 1270 metropolitan Eugene started the building and decoration of the metropolitan church of saint
Dimitrios. This oil painting shows a
cobbled path that leads down the hill to
the building complex that was
added to the church of saint Dimitrios during the Ottoman Empire. The many flowers are bathing in bright sunlight and in the
background the Eurotas valley can be
seen. What inspired me to paint this landscape was the way in which the flowers
seemed to
radiate light. The trunk of the cypress tree casts a shadow forming a line
that guides the eye to the sun lit flowers, playing the leading part. I’ve
argued before (see here) that many landscape paintings gain interest by
incorporating some kind of human intervention; without the building complex
there would be no “stage” for the flowers to play their leading role.
Cobbled path leading
down to the church of saint
Dimitrios, Mystras
40 x 50 cm, oil
painting
Pantanassa Monastery , Mystras
Laconia in early Spring is one of the most beautiful places to
be. The abundance of colours is
impressive. The highest peaks of Mount Taygetos are covered
in brightly shining white; yellow, red, pink and violet flowers enliven the green meadows and the sky
is nearly always blue. It’s not difficult for a painter to find a
subject to paint. No matter how
inspiring nature may be though , quite often a landscape becomes more
interesting when one can include an architectural construction. My dear father, Jan
Poelstra, who left us last year only a
week before his eighty-third birthday (may his memory last forever) was a successful architect. It was his opinion
that a building appropriately designed accomplishes nature.
In many of my paintings I’ve acted upon his principle
(see for instance here). Human
intervention does not necessarily have to be the point of focus in a painting. In
this oil painting the bell tower of the Pantanassa Monastery in Mystras serves as background to the Mediterranean Spurge.
Byzantine church in Mystras
Nearly
twenty years ago now, when my son was still a little baby, I started painting.
My life in the little Greek village I lived in after my marriage to the owner
of the local coffee shop had become so unbearably dull that I decided that I
had to find something to do to give meaning to my life. When I was a little
girl I’d liked to draw and to
paint. I even had won a price in a drawing
contest for basic schools in Belgium and
the Netherlands. Every morning when I woke up the first thing I saw was the
snow topped mountain range of Taygetos. From the terrace of my house I could
see both the Byzantine castle town of
Mystras and the pre-historic sanctuary of
Menelaos and Helen. The little village was surrounded by olive
groves and along the banks of the river
Eurotas grew many orange trees. The
ideal environment for a creative spirit.
Every time
I went to visit my parents and sister in
Holland I returned with my suitcases filled to the brim with art books on how
to learn to paint. I bought oil paints and brushes. An easel was slept from
Holland to Laconia by my sister and her husband in their old Opel. And I
started to paint.
My first
painting was a large one: 50 x 70 cm.
The subject of the painting is the Byzantine church of the holy
two saints Theodoros in springtime
Mystras. In the painting one can see the snowtopped mountain Taygetos in the background, while in
the center one sees the flesh coloured octagonal Byzantine church in the midst
of green meadows topped with flowers and
flanked by rows of elegant cypresses.
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