In my oil painting titled "Ogygia," I aim to express a feeling of isolation and the loss of orientation. In the myth of Ogygia, Odysseus is held on an island that is both a paradise and a prison. Here, the sky offers no escape. The clouds lean in like heavy walls, closing off the horizon. The only option for escape is through the abstract opening in the foreground, a threshold that leads not to safety, but into a deep, unknown darkness.

"Ogygia" is a place of sensory contradictions, where the viewer is suspended in a space of "beautiful" danger. The water feels calm yet the waves are frightening and there is no logical path home. Most of these thoughts came to me during the process. The painting was finished only when it all finally made sense and I started to wonder: what would such a place sound like?

To capture this ancient atmosphere, I used traditional 17th-century techniques on a canvas I prepared by hand. I chose to leave the natural flaws of the handmade fabric visible, grounding the mythic subject in a tangible, human process. By building layers of oil without a final varnish, the water achieves an internal, organic glow, as if the light itself is trapped within the currents of the sea.