Between the blues of sea and sky, pure white. Mykonos town unfolds before my eyes like a residential sculpture. Mykonos architecture is a grand example of unique Cycladic architecture set around a picturesque fishing-village bay. A primeval architectural model which captures and conveys the very nature responsible for its existence. I read… *”the key to Greek art lies in visually experiencing Greek nature, its landscape”… “it is impossible to truly connect with Greek art, comprehend it, grasp its spiritual dimension and fine creation, when it is outside of Greece […] For if there exists a correlation between thought and shape for Greeks, it is thanks to the indissoluble link they have with their surrounding natural environment, a link that is a hallow archetype”.
…“I belong to a small country. A rocky promontory in the Mediterranean, it has nothing to distinguish it but the efforts of its people, the sea, and the light of the sun. It is a small country, but its tradition is immense and has been handed down through the centuries without interruption”. Excerpt from the speech given by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Giorgos Seferis at the City Hall in Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 1963.
At 42 years young, Shirley Valentine had already taken a back-seat to life, watching the days drone by in the same, meaningless way. She would find herself talking to the kitchen wall, where the only semblance of a “life” seemed to resonate from a small poster hidden away on the inside of a cupboard; a simple Greek tourist office brochure tantalized Shirley. The background photograph of a whitewashed chapel topped by a humble cross glowing in the rays of the setting sun, surrounded by the vast turquoise sea, an image so typical of the islands of the Aegean Sea, seemed to call out to her.