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Canberra Today 11°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / Artist at home with his past

Winters' Diana Disco mural.
Winters’ Diana Disco mural.

NEWS has arrived from artist Michael Winters of close encounters with his past on the Greek island of Leros.

We last reported on Winters in connection with an exhibition at Strathnairn in July by 30 of his students from the ANU Centre of Continuing Education’s visual arts access program, where the bright colours and unusual perceptions gave us a glimpse into the warmer months.

At the time, he reported that he was heading for Leros, of which he is an honorary citizen having spent many of his formative years as an artist living and working there.

In 1982 a Leros restaurant commissioned him to paint a mural. The restaurant only lasted a short time, he thinks, but on arriving in Leros, he peered through the windows and all the junk, and saw that “on the wall, there was my mural, as fresh as the day I finished it. A joy.”

His appetite thus whetted, Winters remembered that, around the same time, the island’s first disco was about to open and he was commissioned to paint a mural on the theme of the Goddess, Artemis or Diana, archaic protectress of the island.

The “Diana Disco” closed long ago, but undeterred, he found the present owner.

“Not having any power, he guided me into the disco and, shining his torch on to the wall, there was the mural I painted in 1979, I have not seen it for some 25 years,” writes Winters.

“Now both my Leros murals can see the light of day,” the happy artist says. “CityNews” is happy to provide that light.

Artist Michael Winters with his 1982 restaurant mural.
Artist Michael Winters with his 1982 restaurant mural.

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Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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