In times of economic affluence before Christianity it celebrated the joys of life, love and the adventures of wondrous deities. It had to reinvent itself during the rule of the Byzantine Emperors to follow the religious rules and dogmata pertaining to that era. Even so, the artists managed to maintain such gentleness in the rendering of the saints and the angels, the viewer often forgets that thei
r given materials were smalto and stone. Their palettes were delightfully colorful. It is in such a cultural setting that I seek that my mosaic work finds context and meaning. My vision is to provide a contemporary, fresh approach to the use of this media and thus find ways to establish continuity in the tradition of mosaic-making on the island. The majority of my materials are local, gathered from the beaches, the mountains and abandoned mines, and cut down to tesserae with the use of hammer and anvil, in the same way my predecessors did. Sometimes entrapped beside them are printers’ letterpress, artists’ inks and discarded keys. They tell the stories of our modern material culture, fossilized beside rock and quartz formed by the natural elements millions of years past. Shapes and colors change to convey my thoughts and moods at a particular moment in time. Here are mosaics representative of my work of the past five years and hopes and wishes that you will enjoy them as much as I do. Ioanna Marcoux
