IN THE STUDIO: Panagiotis Rappas

We tour artists’ studios with the aim of choosing new or older works to unravel the thread of dialogue, in the case of Panagiotis Rappas, we choose to flip together his sketch books, which “They contain thoughts and memories of places I visited and the time I lived on them, worked, made friends, collaborated or fell in love” as he emphasizes characteristically. To me, personally, they look like cartoons since contain a sensitive and delicate visual writing but also as adult fairy tales  where through the outlines and gaps they allow the imagination to penetrate them. It’s a magical world… that invites you to sink into and to dream, to dream without limits…

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Panagiotis Rappas Archive

Mr. Rappas, in addition to the basic body of your work consisting of watercolors, we know that you have a large volume of sketchbooks, how they started?

Given that a very important part of my work concerns animation -and as it is known animation is an art form that requires infinite numbers of drawings- it is very difficult to determine what is exactly the main body of my work. I leave aside the fact that very often, almost daily, I draw digitally computer-generated images stored in the form of algorithms on a hard disk. Sketchbooks again for a painter or designer are his personal notebooks. And the draft notes within them cover the whole field of his interests. They are recordings of images she saw or thought of and wants to keep in memory or to let them mature over time. But they can also be “encrypted” calendars. This is the case with many of my ones. They contain thoughts and memories of places I visited and the time I lived on them, worked, made friends, collaborated or fell in love. Notes that someone cannot read clearly but can perhaps sense the intensity of a moment passed by or an elusive idea. An idea that searches for the way and the method to be formulated in the future, after it has matured.

Have you been influenced by the great artists many of whom have had kept sketchbooks that have already been shown in special exhibitions and if so by whom?

Well-known and as well as less known artists alike kept and still keeping notes. Some of them systematically others occasionally. I enjoy it, if I have the opportunity, to spend time studying the sketchbooks, the “notes” of artists’ that I admire their work.  They are usually free of the burden and stress of officially presented “work” and the extra “glaze” that it carries sometimes. One can “read” in their notes, frankly all the creative agony that accompanied their efforts to formulate what occupied their thoughts and interest. Some of them are real masterpieces. William Turner’s sketchbooks are my favorite ones.

Browsing through a large section available to us, choosing 25 of them, we feel that we are browsing your personal diary, there they include cities, places, and landscapes you have lived in and you are connected to.

They are indeed primarily personal diaries. And I do have, of course, a very personal relationship with them. Whenever I come back and flip through them, the memories of the time and the place they capture come back with a clarity that amazes me every single time. The light, the mood, the thoughts that bothered me back then, the friends and colleagues I was spending my time with, are back there as if not even one single day has gone by. Like a Rose of Jericho plant, that with just a little ship of water will come back to life, they wait for gaze.

Most of them in color, a few black and white, some look like animated and they contain delicate visuals, but they work also like fairy tales for adults. Through the outlines, color, and gaps, they allow the imagination to get in and penetrate them.

Rather than a reply, I should thank you for the compliment … I can hardly say anything about it. The relationship I have with them is a very personal one and I find it difficult to distance myself from it. They are traces of my life. The signs I will leave behind by the time I have to “go”. If they really talk in that way to someone who looks at them, I’m more than glad. After all, this is why we are “saying something over and over again” to remember B. Brecht’s phrase: To fight a certain feeling of loneliness deep down in the human condition.

As far as we know, you have a great deal of sketchbooks, and you keep working. Are they independent of the rest of your work or are they interconnected?

Rather, siblings, I would say. Painting and visual arts in general, I believe, is one more way of expressing thoughts, senses, and feelings arising from our participation in this great mystery we call “Life” that leaves us confused and ecstatic. And the better they are articulated, the more they manage to soothe this sense of “loneliness” that looms over the darkest and unexplored corners of our existence.

Have you considered putting them all together as a single project and if so where and how? (in a Big Museum, as an Installation)?

No, I haven’t. But I still find always in those sketchbooks “forgotten” but in many way’s “useful” as well material. I am currently working on an animated short, a tribute to Miltos Sachtouri’s poetry. A poet who, as more I study him, I am impressed with his boldness and courage to “walk” in areas of existence that we usually avoid to enter or even to admit at all that they do exist within us. Browsing old drawings and notes on my sketchbooks I have found incredibly useful material for the film.

Download Greek Version of Interview here.

First Publication: www.dreamideamachine.com
© Interview-Efi Michalarou

Panagiotis Rappas (born 29/9/1960in Hydra island, Greece), studied Painting, Engraving and Animation in Germany. He is animator, storyboard artist, scriptwriter, director και filmmaker (mostly Animation) and painter. Despite his pivotal posi tion in the international film world, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science voting member, Panagiotis Rappas’ work as a visual artist is little known. In 1985 he began working in the animation industry, in Berlin and Munich. In 1989 when Steven Spielberg opened AMBLIN-Universal animation studio in London, he was one of the first-recruited artists. The same time he continues to work as a freelance animation director in various animated projects and television commercials in London’s West End. In 1995 he co-founded Stardust Pictures Ltd and acted as Producer and Creative Director of the projects undertaken by the company such as the acclaimed “1001 Nights” for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Oscar nominated animation short “The Periwig Maker”. Between 1998 and 2000 he moved to the United States to provide Storyboard, Layout Supervision and Sequence Direction on various projects for Paramount/Nickelodeon. His animated children films won international recognition and many awards around the globe. Next to his animation work he did Stage Design for many Theatre plays and Illustrations for Children Books. His work has won numerous international awards in Europe and the US. Having extensive experience in organizing Animation filmmaking, he often serves as a special advisor for respective productions, and from time to time teaches Animation at Fine Arts Schools and Colleges through intensive seminars.