“My first impression of the sea was a feeling of freedom. Ships represent the endless human quest.”
For over two decades, Tilemachos Kyriazatis has painted the great vessels of the modern sea — oil tankers, bulk carriers, commercial ships crossing open water in silence. Yet these are not paintings of industry. They are paintings of myth.
Each vessel carries a name from ancient Greece — Artemis, Amphitrite, Orpheus, Thetis, Triton, Oceanids — because for Kyriazatis, ships have always been more than steel and cargo. Since antiquity they have connected civilisations, transcended boundaries, and carried the weight of human longing across impossible distances. The people who sail them are, in his words, “travelling souls” — and so is he.
Painted in high-pigment oils built up in textured layers, these large-scale works capture the scale, solitude and strange beauty of vessels that most of us will only ever see from shore.
Available for private commissions — if you would like a portrait of a specific vessel, please [get in touch.]
