Artist Statement
After completing my studies in arts in the UK, I returned back to my home island as an emerging Cypriot artist to put my efforts and contribute to cultivate the artistic scene and boost intercommunal cultural work in Cyprus. My main focus has been to evoke togetherness of the two communities living in the currently divided island through art conversations. I planted its seeds during a residency at a local non-profit organization where I was truly committed to combining my artistic practice with such activist work. Continued research and observations within this topic of cultural artistic identity have led into an array of artistic disciplines including large-scale oil painting, paper weaving, printmaking and glass mosaic. I commonly use paper weaving to plan paintings. These weaves reflect, and sometimes contrast, the nature of the painting produced; more fully capture my thoughts and the process in which I plan a piece. Heavy-mass and solid paintings versus light-biomorphic paper weaves leads to an expansion of physical exploration that can provide confidence and inner-peace within my practice. In the paintings I produce, having impasto in parts is crucial. Consistency of paint and materiality of work connects my frequent subject matter – humpback whales, or local caretta turtles – to its organic form: a thick ragged skin on plain open background and surroundings. These thick surfaces are also a way of communicating between the predecessor and the current painting, as the successor work inherits its unique texture through dried paint skins from the previous work’s paint palette. This recycling practice has been a tradition within my practice constructing a hidden conversation amongst my paintings. Humpback whales have an imposing physicality in my work and assert an embodied reality beyond the metaphorical. The abstract-realist paintings I produce are often heavy with impasto and vibrant colours that are unusual for certain marine scenarios yet relatable to observers’ contemporary artistic mood. Perception of colour has been a key element of question in my most recent work. A very familiar subject – whale – becomes an object within my experimentation with colour and how we receive it through numerous combinations of geometric proportions. Before commencing any particular painting, I weave the chosen whale image with coloured card stocks to plan the piece. By introducing different coloured paper weaves for a single subject, I indulge experimenting with variety of colour combinations and tonal values. Through this, I perceive different tones of the subject’s colours; with warm paper shades the subject is grey toned, while with cool shades it is more blue toned. This realization is key in overcoming uncertainty and reach inner peace in my production. Paper weaving has evolved within my practice from preparatory process into additional geometric and abstract forms; now companions to my whales. These shapes have allowed me to expand the perspective from my usual marine figures to using these marine creatures as a comfortable subject matter accompanied by geometric forms within these experiments. Thus, this experimental co-existence within my paintings creates an optical tease for the viewer across the canvas.