Your training in both contemporary and Byzantine iconography art techniques is quite unique. How do these diverse influences manifest in your artistic style, particularly when working with watercolors, inks, and acrylics?
I first started training in byzantine iconography techniques when I was 6 years old, and a couple years later started learning contemporary art techniques as well. Whilst studying for the former, I certainly became more accustomed to portraying human figures and faces, so that did help later on, especially with regards to figurative art. I also learned to use layer lighter upon lighter shades to depict depth and light. Another technique, or I guess it would be better to put it as a detail I like to include in my paintings, is the use of halos around fantastical characters/ creatures; I guess this helps me add more layers and depth to the story I am trying to convey each time.
Your paintings draw from mythology, fantasy, and nature. Could you share a specific myth or fantasy narrative that has significantly inspired your work, and how does it translate onto canvas?
I grew up reading various myths and folklore, and often choose to incorporate those in my artwork these days. For example, I like portraying dragons, the way they would often be depicted in far eastern lore. I also like to present a sense of duality, a light along with a dark, and thus create creatures which would seem ambiguous – benevolent for some, destructive for others. In either case, the interpretation is but a mere reflection of the observer’s inner world.
You mentioned a transition from landscape-oriented work to utilizing intricate line work, abstract depictions, and vivid colors. What prompted this evolution, and how has it impacted the storytelling aspect of your paintings?
My themes did undergo a change during the last 2 years; I used to mostly paint natural landscapes. I think on one hand it coincided with life stresses that spilled over to my artistic practice, and on the other hand, it overlapped with a deep, internal need for change and progress, something which I saw to be lacking in my life at the time. I was in need of some hope – so I painted stories that helped me dream.
The use of intricate linework came as a result of my need to paint a dreamlike state – forms made of ink and water that could almost jump out of the page, if one were to turn their gaze away from the canvas, even for a moment. However, I also use linework since I find the process quite relaxing in its own. I now create landscapes but with a dreamy of fantastic twist; lines and ink spilling here and there, fantastic forms floating around, in dimensions one would not expect – I like to paint dreamworlds.
The forms in my paintings are usually just a mere echo of the natural, detailed form; more abstract, more dreamlike, but always with a sense of movement. My colours have become bolder and somewhat darker as time went by; I like using royal blue, prussian blue and other darker blue shades quite a bit, because of the contrasts I can create between light and dark, but also because of the feelings these colours envoke in me. They help me create a comfortable darkness, a blanket of dark blue, the kind that might seem like a dark night filled with stars, surrounding the dreamer, keeping them safe.
These help me create glimpses into worlds, and portals into otherworldly dimensions, where things don’t makes sense, at least in the way one would expect. These are my stories, and they forever will be.
Since early 2023, you've participated in both physical and virtual exhibitions in Greece and abroad. How has the experience of exhibiting in different spaces influenced your artistic perspective and the reception of your work?
I have exhibited in various locations since 2023; in essence, my journey into the modern artworld has started in 2023. I choose both physical and digital venues; whilst with physical venues it is much easier to show my paintings up close, with digital venues, it is easier to reach bigger audiences. Though some find my themes weird, others seem to understand right away; thus, though reaching larger audiences might be favorable for many artists, including myself, I have to admit that there is also a comfort in knowing some people out there will understand your work without too much explanation – a kindred of spirit.
Your work emphasizes the vividness of pictures in conveying a compelling story. Can you delve into how colors, lines, and abstract flows play a role in telling the narratives within your paintings?
The colours are important, since they evoke emotion and dream; I like to contrast between lights and darks, to make lighter colours stand out more, but to also create a sense of comfort, a dark blanket of blues. The lines are a medium for the flow; the lines will flow towards various points in the canvas, create a sense of movement, generating abstract figures and designs as they go, and help the paint flow all around. For this part, the paint I like to use is usually liquid, to help the flow, and to create a sense of swirling and swooshing, a sea of moving color.
This helps me tell stories; sometimes set in a dream, sometimes lost in time, and sometimes both. Portals to something we might not expect but still, always dream about.
In your statement, you mention that your paintings are stories of ancient times, fantasy, and mythology. How do you approach storytelling through visual art, and what aspects of these stories do you find most captivating to convey?
I love telling stories through visual art! I use lines and splashes of paint to create movement, but mostly it is the positioning of the elements in my paintings, and other static elements of the dreamscape that help in the storytelling. Stars in the sky swirling for example, abandoned buildings and castles, blue sands, spirits moving through the air or the ground. They are all part of my stories, part of the dreamworlds I like to build.
The most captivating aspect of these I would say is the aspect that many of these stories are so far away from us, their true meaning is lost; multiple stories may exist, all different, often describing the same thing. The truth, however, will always be hidden behind these stories, or at least a part of it. In my paintings time is a convolution, a messy ball of yarn, a storm cloud in the middle of nowhere; some elements may be hidden in time and space, while others may be really close and feel as real as you and me - as if they are indeed part of this contemporary straight line we call time.
Your artworks explore the idea of being within a dream, sometimes our own, sometimes someone else’s. How do you navigate the boundary between reality and dream within your artwork, and do you intentionally leave certain elements open to interpretation?
I like to blur the lines between dream and reality in my paintings; some elements and narratives may change depending on the point of view, making a dragon seem benevolent or destructive for example, depending on who’s looking or who’s giving the interpretation, at least. I sometimes like to describe my paintings in metaphors; a beast may be entrenched in light and yet light is not all that it is, at least in the sense one would describe from a realistic point of view. The stories and the myths, they may be false, or they may be all true; they will certainly however never describe it, at least not in whole. Each story is just another version from another observer’s point of view, a lie on its own, but maybe part of a wider truth. Each story may be what the dragon is or was or will be, but not all it is or all it can be - and that is the point.
The concept of flow, both in terms of ley lines, time, reality, and chaos, seems central to your work. Could you elaborate on how you incorporate this sense of perpetual flow into the visual language of your paintings?
I like the sense of flow, always eternally flowing and I depict it in my art through use of actual, convoluted lines. As the lines move, they create forms, characters, landscapes but then they change again; as the dream moves, as the colours change from light to dark, so do the lines – this time they depict something else. I like to picture everything that exists or ever existed as a complex net of lines and flows, of magic mixing with reality; no matter what, even when the end of the canvas is reached, the flow will not stop, it will continue on to another canvas, another medium. There is never an end, and the beginning might have been always there, or it may have been created out of thin air while we were not looking; it will always flow. It is the flow of creation; for it is imagination that shapes it, and imagination knows no bounds.
Your work often depicts oddities and strangeness without further explanation, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the dreamlike atmosphere. How do you strike a balance between providing narrative cues and leaving room for individual interpretation in your art?
I like to do this by creating incomplete forms; forms that may be one thing and simultaneously another. Using liquid medium and water helps in this regard, as it helps me create a sense of movement, as I have already mentioned before. This movement also refers to paint creating itself into different forms; it seems to be swirling and swishing, being one thing to one observer, and then seeming as something completely different to another – something living and everchanging. A constant evolution, a constant flow, its shape never something in particular, but always something specific, depending on the those that observe it at any given moment.
I like to use the term “flow” in my paintings, the lines flowing, going from one end of the canvas to another, to signify the flow of time or the flow of creation. It never stops, because even if the boundaries in one canvas end, they will begin anew in another. I like the idea of endless, of always existing, in one form or another. The landscapes may change, the buildings may fall, new ones will come in their place, but even when nothing seems to exist at the end, even when the nothingness of the dark seems to await us, something will always come into existence. It will simply exist in another canvas, another reality, another universe, another time. It is these lines, that exist throughout my work, that unify it; lines beginning in one place, continuing on in another, they swirl and create figures, they end and then they begin again. Observers may see them end, they may see them form one object, but that is but a fraction of the existence presented, a fraction of the lines expressing themselves at any given moment, as a mermaid, a fish, a dragon, a swirl of stars for example. The sun gives way to clouds, the light gives way to dark, the day gives way to night and then it all starts again; somewhere, someplace, everything always starts.
This eternal movement is also prominent in the theme for my solo exhibition “Spirits moving through a seasalt town”, lines shaping into floating spirits, mermaids, spirits existing in sea landscapes, bridging the gap between day and night. I like to use my art and my stories to show myself – without showing myself.
