His landscapes and seascapes are not classical in style as the sea is just a motive for his colour palette while the shapes of his ships are more conceptual and impressionist than figurative.

The art historian, critic Manos Stefanidis wrote about Yannis Stavrou’s work in 2006 (excerpt from the essay under the title "Glass Eyes, Resurrected Gazes - On Yannis Stavrou's Paintings" by Manos Stefanidis): “I see his paintings as a challenge for an inner voyage, an opportunity for a resurrection of the gaze - a prolongation of real life.

His compositions are structured around two opposite poles: tenderness and a sturdy rhythm; a sense for detail and understanding of the whole; a kind of sentimental escape to mirthful images, as Kosmas Politis would put it, and a preoccupation with form, represented in an unadorned and solid fashion.

Here plasticity is achieved via abstractive processes, and elsewhere a tiny light - one catalytic brushstroke - unveils a well-hidden secret.

An offspring himself of the lucky generation, which witnessed the historical heart-rending moments of Greek urban centers, and more closely so in his city of Thessaloniki, he takes us by the hand, striding with confident strokes back to our legendary childhood evoked by his images; deep down into the bottomless hollow of Thermaikos harbour, where the massive metal shapes of ships are hovering all aloof, emerging through the midst of cracking-dawn's fog."