2025-08-07

BEHIND THE PAINTINGS: A Boy on Paradiso – A Memory in Layers

The First Encounter

It was a warm day on Naxos, sometime in the summer of 2021. On the naturist beach Paradiso, my gaze fell on a boy sitting alone. His posture was relaxed, his presence unobtrusive yet magnetic. He sat with his back to the bushes against the dune, looking at the beach, listening to music, watching, observing. He was probably a local — you could tell by the effortless way he moved among the others. There was something in his expression — a mix of calm and guardedness — that struck me.

Taking photos on a naturist beach is not done. Still, I secretly took one from a distance. Not out of voyeurism, but from a desire to preserve the moment. The photo was never shared. What I eventually created was a painting — an interpretation, not a reproduction. But I saw in the photo he was looking my way, was I caught.

The Painting

The painting shows him as I remember: naked, vulnerable, in all his beauty, seated on a towel. But this time the sea was behind him, waves gently breaking. The sky a clear blue, the horizon sharp. His posture is relaxed, but his gaze — hidden behind sunglasses — lingers. The brushstrokes are visible, the colors layered. The work is not a document, but a memory. A tribute to a boy, a beach, a feeling.

It takes place on Paradiso beach, a naturist beach on Naxos where the gay community “coincidentally” mingles with other tourists and locals. That coincidence is loaded. For some locals, being seen here is difficult. Acceptance in orthodox Greece, especially in a small island community where everyone knows you, is sometimes different from other parts of the world. There’s a quiet tension in the air — between freedom and restraint, between visibility and anonymity. I wanted to convey to him the freedom that surrounds the beach, to be himself, to be proud.

Fast forward to September 2024. On a busier weekend beach day, a boy lay next to us who, after a while, looked strikingly similar to the boy from back then. He was a local. I didn’t speak to him, but he resembled my incognito model so closely. And that was enough — as if the canvas briefly came to life, without needing to explain itself.

Confronting the Viewer

The last time I showed the work was during the art weekend in Oudorp, North Holland. In a garage box beneath the studio of a painter friend — a space that smells of turpentine, wood, and anticipation. Her side was filled with still lifes and cityscapes of Alkmaar: smaller, detailed oil paintings, modest and familiar. My side was different.

Six large works hung on the wall. *Menelaos and Patrocles*, *The Dancing Faun*, *A Midnight Paradise* — freshly finished, 90 by 120 centimeters. And next to them, the series of three Paradiso paintings, same size. Monumental, inescapable. When unsuspecting visitors entered and stood before my work, you could see them literally recoil. “Oohhh, that’s a bit much,” I heard. “That’s definitely something else.”

Comments like “uhh yeah, not really my thing” often turned into curiosity. Into appreciation. Female visitors were notably pleased to see a male theme — let alone male nudity. The men were more reserved. Are you allowed to find this beautiful? Compliments or questions about technique often marked the stage of acceptance. Under the motto “nice to see something different,” they could safely move on to the next artist on the route.

As long as they’ve seen it.

There’s always an audience that offers a nod or a “hello” and walks on. That’s fine. Not everyone needs to be moved. But the work hangs there, visible, unavoidable. And those who linger are seen — just like him.

What Remains

Sometimes an encounter is so fleeting that you only realize later how deeply it has settled. The boy on the beach wasn’t a muse in the classical sense. He was a moment — a crossroads of desire, beauty, and silence. The painting that emerged from that encounter isn’t a portrait of him, but of what he represented: a longing for connection, a fascination with the unspoken.

I never spoke to him. Maybe that was for the best. His anonymity allowed space for interpretation, for imagination. And when I perhaps saw him again, three years later, it felt as if the universe gave a subtle nod. As if memory and reality briefly touched — and then drifted apart again, like waves breaking and disappearing.

What remains is the image. And the silence around it.