Sergej Andreevski on Andros: how red earth and blue sea shaped his work
An artist’s account of how the clash between red earth and endless blue turned Andros into a creative refuge.
Sergej Andreevski describes stepping off the ferry and being immediately taken by Andros: the island’s stone-scented air, the rhythm of waves and the small, rugged details that reshape an artist’s perception.
Red earth, endless blue
He notes how the landscape repeatedly stages the same visual duel: soil in warm terracotta tones set against the uninterrupted blue of sea and sky. "That collision of red and blue is fascinating and wondrously alluring — magic," he says, explaining why the island keeps drawing him back.
Andros still holds hidden beaches where water laps into the very bowels of the shore; wind sometimes lifts the island’s red dust into the air, adding a transient, earthy haze to the coastal palette. The stone walls that crisscross the hillsides, and the old olive trees that stand as witnesses to former abundance, give the place a sculptural quality that feeds a visual imagination.
"Првпат островот го посетивме заедно со сопругата во 2024 година." Their host was Haris Savides, an architect, photographer and aesthete of international standing, who introduced them to a quiet, creative refuge on the island and shared a plan to build an artistic village there.
Andreevski says that the following year Haris’s Amalia Gardens began to glow as an art residency. This year he returned for the third time, bringing his colleague Nikola Pijanmanov; together they layered their work with pieces by participants from Greece and beyond, leaving "powerful works" as testimony to their encounter with the island’s space and spirit.
The account is less a travelogue than an artist’s field report: attentive to textures, smells and the noises of rural life — bells, the bleating of goats and the secret springs that appear and vanish in rock crevices. For Andreevski, Andros is now a recurring source of material and meaning.
Photo: приватна архива
