Derek Pegrum   www.derekpegrum.com

Many artists of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th century visited Greece picturing the beauty of ancient and modern Greece with great success. We can see that in their work, the love and admiration for Greece that inspired them with the light and the colour of our country. One of them in the British painter Derek Pegrum, whose dream came true, coming and living in Naxos permanently and working under the Greek blue sky. He paints in a beautiful and tranquil environment where he gets his unique inspirations.

With pencil or brush in hand, he narrates what his eyes can see, what his memory contains. A tireless traveller, curious about life, about its most insignicant beauties and its most important ones, he encounters everyday reality on its own ground. Technique is not only knowledge of the material and the composition of colours. It is also a medium for the externalisation of one's thoughts. There's no rule for beauty. The philosophers in antiquity said that it was not enough to be beautiful. One's soul had to be beautiful too. And beauty is the proof of love... Pegrum rejects intellectualism in painting. He is a painter of simple pleasure, quiet enjoyment and the continuity of things. He does not speak against his own times, nor does he oppose them.

We must thank Derek Pegrum for his excellent work and the mayor Nicos Marakis and the vice-mayor E. Pittaras of Naxos for giving us the opportunity to admire this exhibition dedicated to the Cyclade island of Naxos.

I hope that Pegrum's work, amongst other artists from Greece and abroad, especially those living in Naxos and the Cyclades, will one day be under the same roof by creating the Town Hall Gallery of Naxos. I have already proposed the matter to the mayor, who excepted it with great enthusiasm so the locals and the visitors of the island can have the pleasure to admire Greek and foreign art.

J. Papageorgiou
Critic of Art
Expert of Greek painting, writer and journalist