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This past June we went on a trip to Greece to do some painting, sailing, yoga and hiking.

Lefkada is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, connected to the mainland by a causeway. We were especially interested in visiting this area because it is the namesake of Micaiah’s home town, “Leucadia”. Lefko, meaning “white” in Greek, is the basis for this island’s name, and an apt description of the beautiful limestone cliffs which crumble into white rocks, laying a backdrop for turquoise waters and the historical “Cape Lefkada”, where the Greek female poet Sappho allegedly leapt to her death from the 100 foot high cliffs.

In Greek mythology, Phaon was a boatman. He was old and ugly when Aphrodite came onto his boat. She had disguised herself as a crone. Phaon ferried her over to Asia Minor and accepted no payment for doing so. In return, she gave him a box of ointment. When he rubbed it on himself, he became young and beautiful. Many were captivated by his beauty. Sappho fell in love with him. He lay with her but soon grew to resent her and devalue her. Sappho was so distraught with his rejection that she threw herself from a cliff into the sea.

Micaiah wants to paint a scene of Sappho falling from the cliff… I told him I thought that was a little dark. If anyone is interested, let him know. Nothing would thrill him more than being commissioned to paint his own rendition of this Greek tragedy.

He did create a collection of small plein air studies while on the island. Three of the studies were selected for an exhibit at The Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The exhibit is titled “Maritime Miniatures by Maritime Masters”.

Sailing to Ithaca 6"x8" Plein Air-Oil on Linen 

Egyptian Freighter in Vasiliki Bay 6"x8" Plein Air-Oil on Linen 

Agiofili Beach 6"x8" Plein Air-Oil on Linen 

Through our travels there, it was impossible not to try using Spanish to get by as it proves to be very helpful in Italian, French or Portuguese speaking countries, but we quickly found that the only word in Greek which even vaguely resembles a word in Spanish is the word Σάββατο which is Sabado in Spanish. Saturday in English. Even that was a bit of a stretch. Despite our lack of local language skills, we managed to navigate our way from Athens, by way of multiple trains, down to the nearest port and by sheer luck and wandering we found the Yacht Club of Greece & the conjoined Piraeus Sailing Club. There we had one of the top 5 meals of my life at a restaurant called Istioploikos, where we settled in on a sunny deck over the sea and ordered blind from the menu (no English menu was available and none of the servers were bilingual). We were blown away by an incredible seafood spread, salad, and Mastika liquor served as an aperitif. Mastika is a locally made spirit derived from the sap of an evergreen shrub that grows in the Mediterranean. It tastes like a mild sweet pine resin and is served over ice.

We sat on the deck watching a children’s sailing regatta going on in the bay. The race course was set up with large inflatable pool toys as the markers, so there were big swans and flamingos out on the water with tiny humans on equally small boats slowly making their way around each one. It felt like time had slowed to a mercifully unhurried pace to let us savor this slice of heaven. Or maybe it just seemed that way because the inexperienced kids took so long to weave through their happy race course. Towards the end of the race a patch of fog rolled through and after the last boat had rounded the swan out in front of us, the whole zoo of buoys were collected by the adult on a zodiac. As we left that afternoon, Micaiah stopped to take a few pictures of the kids launching their little sailing dinghies in the bay.

If you came all this way to see the Kauai painting, Click Here :)