Thresholds, thoughtfully curated by Genie Davis, brings together five artists, Eileen Oda Leaf, Hung Viet Nguyen, Angelica Sotiriou, Linda Sue Price, and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic, whose artworks reference the elements of air, water and earth. Working across different mediums such as oil and acrylic painting, mixed-media drawing, neon and 3-D printed sculpture, these artists create landscapes that take us from the depths of underwater reefs to gently rolling hills, jagged mountains, and aerial views of land both icy and green, moving engagingly from the micro to the macro. These five artists present landscape as a state of mind rather than an actual place by creating romantic dreamscapes that are idealized versions of nature.
Both Hung Viet Nguyen and Eileen Oda Leaf invent inviting scenarios, jam-packed with flowers, trees and plants with highly textured surfaces. While Nguyen literally sculpts and incises thickly applied oil paint, creating ridges and crevasses that illuminate his forms in his Sacred Landscape series, Oda Leaf adds actual painted materials to her pieces, as in “Desert Plateau,” laying them out in a regular simplified pattern that recall embroidered Folk Art hangings. Both painters present bucolic unspoiled scenes where the sun always shines, the grass is green, the water is pure and there are rarely people visible. While Nguyen’s paintings focus on the majestic and mysterious, bringing the viewer on a spiritual journey, Oda Leaf’s work focuses on recognizable spots such as piers, desert and forests which she transforms with her lavish color palette. Nguyen and Oda leaf are masterful colorists whose palette and paint handling echo both the Impressionists and the Symbolists.
The sculptors Linda Sue Price and Snezana Saraswati Petrovic use industrial and technological materials such as neon, 3-D printing and augmented reality to create compelling works that challenge our perceptions of the environment. Price’s jaunty neon works evoke both the down to earth world of plants in “Snake Beans” and “Kapeeno,” and aerial views of cities and freeways in “The Other Side of the Story. ” The festive colors and the surprising movement of the neon itself suggests cars moving on a freeway or even the gurgling equipment of a mad scientist, making these works especially lively.
Petrovic’s tiny, jewel-like 3-D printed “Pas De Deux” and “Coral Song” are poetic recreations of coral reefs that the artist not only imagines or re-imagines but ones that she has seen on her many dives. Each delicate translucent piece looks lit from within glowing, lace-like, and seeming to sway. Petrovic, whose works are conceptual, continues her use of 3-D printer technology along with augmented reality in her Sprawling LA series. These two pieces paradoxically look both macro (aerial view) and macro (view of the ocean floor). If one downloads the ARTIVIVE app on one’s smartphone, one can view the AR image that appears over the physical 3-D digital print. A frenetic Los Angeles freeway appears over one landscape and a serene ocean view with a seagull flying in the sky appears over the other. Petrovic alludes here to man’s destruction of the ecosystem and what is being destroyed.
Angelica Sotiriou’s works on paper and canvas are highly abstracted and poetic. Her large- scale mixed media painting “Scala, Divine Ascent,” highlights striations between earth and the heavens that are delineated, moving from earth tones to blue sky and to a glowing beyond. A simplified gold leaf tree reaches upwards towards the stars, perhaps a symbol of growth and transcendence.
Nature is clearly the star in Thresholds – bountiful, fecund, benevolent, a treasure to behold. Humans rarely appear and when they do, they are tiny specks in the immense universe – small and insignificant. They seem newly formed and not yet dangerous to the planet. There are no cars, planes, buses, cruise ships or tourism. This earth is still a paradise, unspoiled and pristine. Clearly a balm for a troubled soul.
And what is the threshold suggested by the title? Is it the precipice we find ourselves on? The tipping point or moving from the now to the point of no return? Is it the portal one steps through from the present into the future, from the known into the unknown? From what could be into what is? Uncertainty swirls about us daily but in this exhibition, Davis offers us beauty, serenity and abundance. Perhaps this is also a gentle call to action – a reminder of what might be lost if we don’t preserve what we have while we still have it.
– Nancy Kay Turner; photos: Nancy Kay Turner, Genie Davis, Dani Dodge Pasadena, CA.
Studio, work in progress, “Scala” 6′ x 4′, acrylic, water soluble graphite 2024
Angelica Sotiriou
Redondo Beach, CA
Age 71
What keeps you excited in the studio?
I love working on new processes for my paintings and drawings. The challenge to clarify my initial vision for the work keeps me focused as I work through resolutions on the canvas or paper.
Looking back at your trajectory as an artist, how would you say your work has developed?
Hmmm…My work now has the comfort in using any medium. I have absolutely no fear to take a risk, to make an error, to use a medium in an unorthodox way, to fear judgement or rejection, to no longer need the approval of my audience to know when my work has found resolution. My clarity in what the vision of my work is, has become second nature. I now work in tandem with my materials, my artist hand, my creative vision and my heart. It truly sometimes feels seamless in the execution of my work. The process has become my language. There is comfort in creating my works that I never experienced as a young artist.
What role do you think the artist has in today’s society?
The Artist’s role is so very important in our society, especially in our world today as it is. Art keeps tab on our present day and who we have become or are becoming. Art often brings attention to social injustices, it brings healing to the artist and to those engaged as an audience, it creates commonality among despairing societal groups, it brings attention to the sacredness of Beauty, it creates cultural bridges, it softens the hardened heart, it has the potential to unify a broken world, it invites others to be empathetic and to become “listeners”.
What’s the most important advice you could give to an aspiring artist?
The best advice for an aspiring artist is…Show up and do the work. Keep doing your work no matter what life throws at you….even if on a given day all you can do is prep your canvas. Also be patient with yourself and know that your lifelong passion may never pay all your bills but it will change the way you see the world and how you live in the world.
Does age matter in art? Why or why not?
Hmmmmm….Indeed, as a younger artist I was full of energy, I could take on multiple tasks and still find time to do my work extravagantly. I knew I had a window of time to be considered as a young emerging artist the “du Jour du faire”. Many decades later, I have physically slowed down. I am more apt to stay home working in the studio, rather than go to a crowded Opening Event. Unfortunately there is “ageism”. Older artists are perceived as such…Older. It is a curious life stage…because in your heart you are the still same 25 year old with the same dream of sharing your art with the world!!!! As an older artist your wisdom and creative clarity is finely honed and your esthetics are defined.
What can we look forward to from you next?
I keep working and working daily in my studio, trying to work in a smaller format with different materials. I have gone back to drawing. Curiously I have rediscovered my first love, 100% rag paper using soluble graphite. I am simultaneously using these same drawing techniques, acrylic transfers and drawing materials in tandem with my acrylic transparencies on my large 7″x 4″ canvases. I am very excited about these new works. As I stated earlier, with age, I am patient with myself and allow time to let my creative resolutions take form.
Is there anything else you would like to share about being an artist later in life?
It is both a blessing and a curse to be a lifelong artist. There is still so much more I would like to do with my art. I would love to be 30 years younger so I could have the stamina and time to do everything I want to as an artist. The best is, I know there is no other life path I would have chosen. Being an artist has given me the gift to live life fully…for that I am forever grateful. The greatest gift of all is that I seek “Beauty” in everything.
“The word ‘Hiraeth,’ is a word for homesickness and nostalgia, a longing for a home that never was, perhaps only in your head, a feeling, a sense of something good that you thought existed, but only ever drew breath inside your own imagination, a place that made you feel safe …”
All works below: rag paper, graphite, colored pencil, metallic pencils, gold leaf, acrylic transfer.
SCALA. February 2024. Media: acrylic, caran d’ache, grease pencil, interference powders, graphite.
“Intelligent silence is the mother of prayer, a recall from captivity, preservation of fire, an overseer of thoughts, a watch against enemies, a prison of mourning, a friend of tears, effective remembrance of death, a depicter of punishment, a delver into judgment, a minister of sorrow, an enemy of freedom of speech, a companion of stillness, an opponent of dogmatism, increase of knowledge, a creator of divine vision, hidden progress, secret ascent.”
What does a day in your practice look like?
My day painting starts weeks before my brush ever touches the canvas. Most of my works are a melding of world events, personal prayers, favorite passages from what I am reading. Each painting starts from sitting silently and allowing myself to make visual the things that loom largest in my days. The images are often amorphous.. defined by color and movement and at times adopting natural shapes. I go to my sketch book and quickly document the images and the dominant theme with graphite, color and side notes. I allow myself time to step back and rework the final sketch. Days prior to painting my work, I set up my paints, colors, graphite, water soluble drawing mediums…I set up my canvas and move my studio around as to allow me some freedom in working on my new work. The night comes and that is when the most satisfying work begins…I allow those hours before falling asleep to walk through the process of creating my painting.. familiarizing myself with what tools and media to use…and modifying my composition. The next day starts early. I stand in front of my canvas and one layer at a time, I patiently define my envisioned composition. I allow a day or two between layers of interference paints and transparencies…there is much time spent visiting the work in progress and allowing myself the joy of “listening” to my work…I always am amazed at the fullness of my heart when a work is done…I often learn far more from my painting than any shared conversation with my closest friend. The process often is a melding of eyes, hand and heart.
Through a Glass Darkly, “Approaching Light”, a.sotiriou
What would life be like without art?
I am so very grateful that Art found me as a very young child. I was a very shy and insecure gentle child. I was an empath very early in life…I was not a very outgoing child but I was a very happy child. I was in second grade when I discovered the joy that painting, drawing and sculpture gave to me. I was and am very visual. I grew into a creative empath, often a thoughtful observer-adult and on occasion, when necessary, I am able to muster up being social and at times mimic being eccentric and outgoing. I realized quickly the place I feel most comfortable and the most seen, is in making my art, looking at art, reading, writing, watching a beautiful choreography, listening to a sublime piece of orchestration, engulfed in a Byzantine chant, hiking in an overgrown forest, standing on a precipice looking at the ocean…eventually everything becomes art, a feast for the soul…the language of the heart…that all eventually find a way and become my art.
What is the best advice you have been given?
A dear friend of many years and she herself an incredible and accomplished artist visited my studio one day. We both had studio spaces in the same building. Her studio space was upstairs from mine. Sometimes I would see her coming downstairs to leave, and I would grab her and demand she look at my new work before she left for the day. Her response was always the same. “Keep painting Angelica, you know what you are doing. Your work is beautiful…keep following it…let it take you. Keep showing up, even on the days you don’t want to work. Show up, sweep your studio, wash your brushes…keep showing up.”
Through a Glass Darkly Series, #3, a.sotiriou
If you could change anything about the art world, what would it be?
Wow, 7 decades later I could write a thesis. I started making art in the late seventies. Then it was “a good-old-boys-club” in the California art scene. So much has changed for the better for women artists but there are still residual “ceilings” that have stayed around from those days in the 70’s and 80’s. There is a hierarchy (not always art-makers…but, end product bottom liners) that deems what is “in” and what is not “in”…shrouded in money, power, status, what is-flavor-of-the-week, and many diverse “isms”. The fall-out from these anchors on the artist is not always conducive to the purity of the artistic language.
I often wonder what the art world would look like if making a living at our craft was not an issue and we could spend our days seeking, preserving and making beauty. Most artists, speaking for myself, have zero business sense.. the hustle is not a natural part of the artistic personality. For some artists, they are able to do both with great success… but, for others, it dampens their spirit.
Studio 11/23, p.rausch
What inspires you the most?
Everything I see, smell, hear, feel, remember, pray eventually becomes my works. Living in a broken world. My works are created in a reciprocal choreography between my heart and the world outside of me. Both the external world and my interior self seamlessly converse…my art through my use of color, texture, movement, light and darkness create a palatable reality for me.
A beautiful hike, a sublime piece of music, holding a child, reading a fluid prophetic poem, a beautiful work of art that takes me deeply into the mystery of life and gives me a glimpse into eternity, the aroma of soup on the stove, the sunlight through the trees, the kindness of a stranger, all are pure gold and crack open my heart and fuel my desire to make my works. My works, for me, create order out of the external chaos of the world. I can meander in the surface of my painting for hours and revel in the beauty of the many colors of a reflected blue. I can surprise myself when taking a dot of red or gold leaf and be beside myself on how compositionally the work is pulled together. I seek beauty in the most mundane places, and I always find it… my work does the same often for me…
Through a Glass Darkly, “Manna”, a.sotiriou
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?
I have no choice. Art is how I process the world around me. Making my art keeps me sane and hopeful…my art has become my lens on how see the world. My husband shares with me that when I have been too long away from making art, I am unsettled and sad. I love obsessively thinking about what my next work will look like when done…the creative process is a bit like being a co-creator with the “powers that be”…there is alchemy, there is divinity, there is unity, there is humanity, there is reverence, there is humility, there is accountability in the creative process. As my art studio friend shared with me, continue to “show up” and do the work.
We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angelica Sotiriou a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Angelica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I knew I would live my life as a creative early on in my life. As a child I was truly an empath. I was a keen observer. All of my childhood memories are framed by what I was feeling and sensing at the time. My most profound memories and significant remembered images would and are triggered by a smell, a sound or even the specific light of day. From the years of my early education, I was always a timid student. I was a wiz at math, reading and abstract thought but froze when having to participate or share to others…I could write and convey those thoughts. My writing as a child was very descriptive, very visual. My world was what I sensed, what I saw…conversations were not often remembered but the setting of the moment in time was a seared memory. In grade school, at home and high school…I was blessed to have a few thoughtful teachers who knew they could include me by handing me paper and paint, clay and tools or just a sharpened pencil and a clean sheet of drawing paper. I am grateful that I had those mentors that paved the way to give me voice as a creative. I haven’t stopped since those very early days drawing, painting, observing, listening and creating works that have been the product of pure alchemy of heart, of soul and of spirit…and an earnest need to share what I see and how I see…and to concurrently teach others how to access the creative process. I have been creating my art professionally for fifty years, and of those years of making art, for forty five years of those years, I chose to teach others the alchemy of creating works of art that give them their most authentic “voice”.
Angelica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I never stopped making works of art. I had a wonderful arts education culminating in a Masters of Fine Arts from UCLA. I was always transfiguring my interior self into a series of paintings, cast paper sculptures and drawings. I never stopped experimenting with color, acrylic paint, graphite and mixed media. I have always allowed the many stages of my daily life, my spiritual life and the turn of events in our world, to impact my created, completed works. My works invite the viewer into my created space on my canvas. Each work beckons the viewer to step closer into their own interior space through the portal of my very large works. Each work is an average size of 7′ x 4’…works that intentionally ask the viewer to become smaller, less ego more spirit, allowing themselves to set aside their intellectual machinations and to surround themselves in the ethers of the painted space. I intentionally use multiple layers of transparency, glazes that use interference powders, to refract light…to expose under the layers hidden shapes, words/symbols and energetic textures. I work much in the same process that of ancient Byzantine iconography. I start out with a very dark painted surface and slowly build layers to bring out or excavate a discovery of brilliant light. Sometimes there are recognizable signposts i.e., a horizon line, a tree limb, a human shape that add to the spatial depth of the ten layers of acrylic transparencies and gold leaf. The works become a “place”, much like the vagueness of memory of childhood, a remembered place that is just out of reach, never to be fully defined or contained. My works allow the viewer to sit and discover and continually rediscover nuances of a work they will never fully understand until they explore their own interior landscape and sacred quietude.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
One key word for choosing the path of a “creative”…is persistence. Much like a determined dog with a bone! Never give up. Never stop working on your craft. Refine your skill continually, refine your vision. Be a life long learner. Trust your intuition. Find ways to use your gift in non-traditional ways to make your living and pay your rent. Never stop making your art…shield yourself with a solid self awareness and and an educated, well honed skill base. I was raised in a very traditional, first generation immigrant home. Being an artist was not an option especially as a child of the 50’s. I was to marry, cook, clean, raise children and to be a subordinate…all are good and valued, but, I realized I wanted to be more than just “that”. It was still in a time where women were not considered equal to the men in the same field. Burning bras had just made the front page. It not an easy time for women artists, it was not easy to find gallery representation, or equal footing in the art world. I often wonder just what-if I was a man and not a woman in the art world…would it have been easier for me to succeed? I will never know. But, I follow in the footsteps of many women writers, artists who came before me. I understand why George Eliot, the Bell Brothers, George Sand, Artemisia Gentileshi, Judith Leyster, Marie-Denise Villers, Caroline Louisa Daly changed their names…ah, and the tragic ending to Camille Claudel…each one determined to pursue their gifts. Times are better now better, but there are still residual and invisible boundaries.
My advice to young women artists is to never stop following your passion and using the gifts you were given. Share your joy and enthusiasm with many and with those you mentor…and always find time to refine and rediscover your core esthetics. Be an advocate for other struggling artists and be a life long learner…Be humble but, be incredible.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I have been so rewarded to be involved in the Arts. To be a part of the “Tribe of Artists” in our world becomes a healing salve in a time in our world where there is so much division and chaos. To hear a symphony, to observe a dance choreography, to hear a voice sing notes that make me cry, to walk into a gallery retrospective of a late career artist and be brought to tears, to read a poem…not once but multiple times and want to read it again so it never leaves me….These are but a few of the reasons I am grateful to be a “creative”. The artist, the creative, can transform the most mundane and most painful into Beauty. Is it not Dostoevsky who said, paraphrasing his words, “Beauty will save the world.” The artist, the Creative, gives hope and reframes that which often can be destructive and counter productive. The artist continually transfigures us by their authentic vision realized.
We had the good fortune of connecting with Angelica Sotiriou and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Angelica, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I knew no other path that fit so well. Indeed, I tried following other career choices, none of which fit my life path. The artistic, creative career chose me. I understood early on that my lens was one of as a “creative”. I found ways to use my creative lens in the world outside of my art studio. I have been a teaching artist for the majority of my art career…teaching in universities, colleges, high schools, elementary and art institutes…sprinkled throughout those years I was a director, a coordinator of art outreach programs, an art gallery manager, I wrote and designed integrated art curriculum for private and public schools, I even designed ads for a small newspaper. All the while, each position was affiliated with “art”…as I said, the creative more artistic career chased me. My perspective of the world has always been through a creative lens. Since childhood, the “Arts”, dance, music, visual and the performing arts is where I find my “tribe”….it is the language of the “heart”.
Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Wow…that is a big question. How did I get to this point in my career…Truly, Dogged-Tenacity! I never stopped making art or teaching art. Even if it was with my children or grandchildren, I found ways to insert the creative process into the day. The challenges were many but the comfort and clarity of staying true to my authentic self was defining and sustaining. Being a woman of immigrant parents, a childhood and young adulthood of limited means, being a woman and a woman-artist in the 70’s where the glass ceiling had yet to be cracked, living through my early years, finding a niche in a community that did not understand how to support the arts, erstwhile, trying always to find balance wearing the many hats of being a dedicated mother, present wife, care-giving daughter, paying bills, being a community member and feeding my artist heart and soul. Yes, the challenges were many…but, they seamlessly integrated into my artwork. Each challenge pushed me even deeper into my dedication to keep my heart’s desire alive. I promised myself, one day, I would have the blessing of my own studio, where I could contemplatively work out the chaos of the world and make “Beauty” and seek “Beauty”. For these last 25 years I have maintained a separate Art Studio, “a room of one’s own”, so to speak. The studio is my oasis, my place of “Sacred Quietude”. I often refer to my studio as a “she” and or my “muse”…she waits patiently for me and allows me to mull over my conceptual perspectives, to modify my ideas and resolutions, to invent and renew ways to use my acrylic paints to better define my visual-prayers and heart-felt concerns of the global density. What incredible magic, to have at the end of my paintbrush…To have the power to create solutions, beauty, bold statements, invitations to intimate and global conversations, a glimpse into a mystical process of creation, to co-create…and to experience the depth of learning that your newest work has to gift you. Truly, making art is a language of the heart, which at times needs no words, or long-winded pontification, to justify why the work is done. I use my medium to invite my audience into my work, layers of translucent, transparent and illuminated paint to find more than just the surface technical application…My work…is to enter my paintings as through a portal, into a seamless timeless space…to catch a fleeting glimpse of something remembered, forgotten, recognized…something that is viscerally sublime and spiritual in it’s invitation to be a part of something larger than us. The works I create are thick with texture and energy, yet, are tranquil in their final compositional resolution.
Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
First off, we would have a blast. Los Angeles and the beach communities are wonderful. I am a native of the area and a day does not go by that I find something wonderful to be grateful for…We would start our day early with a walk along the Strand, near the Hermosa Pier, perhaps pick up a coffee and a croissant at the French Bakery, Cafe Bonaparte. We would drive to the original Guiliano’s Delicatessen in Gardena and pick up delicacies for our picnic lunch. We will head out to hike along the Terranea Resort hike or walk Point Vicente trails in Palos Verdes…wartching the whales and dolphins pass below and the pelicans flying above us. Dinner would be a simple feast at the inviting neighborhood Brazilian Restaurant Panelas Brazilian Cuisine…as we make our list of museums to visit during the week. Our next day and week ahead we would spend our days visiting The Hammer Museum, The Gagosian, LACMA, The Broad, Bergamot Galleries…squeezing in Grand Central Market DTLA and eating at The EggSlut…or venturing to Papa Cristo’s Greek Grill, eating lamb shanks and picking up cheeses, bread and Greek wines to bring home to share in my garden patio…we would swing back to the coast and ride the carousel and Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier and continue our adventure, stopping to walk the canals in Venice and take in Bergamot Station. Los Angeles and the Beach Cities are a beautiful collection of cultural pockets that come with cultural culinary delights and art that gives a nod to each community in it’s own hometown.
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I want to acknowledge the many dedicated teachers in my life (many or most who have passed many years ago) who early on recognized that my shyness was not my lack of intelligence or language aptitude, but, that I was a more introspective and highly creative child. These special teachers took the time to create situations that allowed me to integrate my artistic aptitude into the average core curriculum. My sixth grade teacher Mrs. Kaytor who let me stay after school and help her prep art projects and glaze our ceramic pieces, she gave me license to illustrate my book reports to share them with other grade levels. Mr. Jancar, my high school art teacher who encouraged me and acknowledged my love of art, often showcasing my work on the classroom cork boards. Abundant gratitude to Mr. Fagan, my junior college life-drawing instructor, who would use my drawings to teach his other classes. To my Graduate School professors at UCLA, Lee Mullican for encouraging me to heed my own voice and to Laddie Dill who honored my work with his encouragement and belief school was just the beginning of my life as an artist. To all the women artists in my life who mentored me and modeled for me by their strength, their commitment and dedication to their art, all the while raising children, working to pay their bills and finding ways into an established patristic system of success. Recognition goes to my hardworking father, who deserves recognition for sitting patiently with me at night, as he taught me how to draw the freighters at sea, where he once traveled the world as a chief engineer in the merchant marines.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Angelica (Sotiriou-Rausch).
Hi Angelica (Sotiriou-Rausch), we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I am an artist and a “creative”. I have known no other voice as far back as I can remember. I have been a professional studio artist for 45 years and I have dedicated my life focus on the Arts. I had a wonderful visual arts education and incredible mentors along the way. I received my Masters of Arts and my Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles during the 1970’s (studying with Lee Mullican, Sam Amato, Laddie John Dill, Robert Heineken and all of the women artists that have come before me.) It was a seminal decade in the Arts and was a renaissance of creativity. It was a fascinating era that shaped my arts sensibilities as a woman finding voice through her art. I have been a Teaching-Artist for 46 years. I have been committed to sharing and mentoring the incredible process of creating artworks, seeing through the artist-lens and art-as-career to students from University, Museum Education programs, Outreach programs, At-risk programming and public and private elementary level throughout Los Angeles County.
I am very grateful that I had a career in Arts Education that supplemented my commitment to being a dedicated studio artist. I have created an extensive body of work that has been exhibited over the last four decades in museums, colleges, galleries, places of worship and in private and public venues internationally and nationally. angelicasotiriou.com
My keen sense of color, composition and conceptual narratives in my works has holistically grown from the depths of my childhood upbringing and embedded experiences. I grew up working the acres of flower fields of our wholesale-flower family business. We leased local virgin-soil-fields in the South Bay where we raised our crops of hybrid King Asters. In the flower fields, the rhythm of seasons was liturgical from incarnation to resurrection. To be immersed in the changing cycles of the crops was a daily transfiguring. Each flower was understood as God’s Energies and early on formed my definitive aesthetics of Beauty and my embedded sense of God’s presence.
Intense Color, Awe and Wonder, Mystery and Unseen, Contemplative, Majestic, brilliant Light have been the journey of each deliberate brushstroke on my canvases. My process of creating my works is reflective of the ancient Byzantine iconography process. The works start out with the darkest color and continue with the sequenced fifteen layers of pigment to finish with the lightest color, often white. My works deal with seeking Light. I use interference powders in my transparent and translucent layers to refract light so that the viewer is in a constant relationship with my works. I often see the patrons who are viewing my works in the gallery, moving from left to right to standing close and then stepping back to view my works. When viewing my works the status of the many transparent layers of color change with the natural daylight or overhead gallery lights. Images, shapes and layers of hidden colors are revealed as the perspective and the lighting change. My works are large. The average size is six feet by four feet and often by design, are larger. The process of working in a larger format is often humbling and leaves me relinquishing control and sensing my own smallness. The works become portals, a stepping-into the works themselves. The works are a choreography between the artist’s hand and the artist’s heart. Creating my works becomes for me an intimate relationship.
“I don’t know how
But suddenly there is no darkness left at all.
The sun has poured itself inside me
From a thousand wounds.”
– Nikoforos Vretakos
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Wow, now that is a great reflective question. The challenges and lessons are many. I was raised in a first-generation Greek immigrant home. It was a loving home, but roles were defined and written in stone. Women were to be quiet, relinquish power to the patriarch, serve others, have their betrothed chosen and marry and have children and stay home. My wonderful father passed away when I was just barely a teenager…And with his passing went some of the definitive norms of my culture. I was the youngest child to older parents. There was pain and there was freedom, in that order. I was a bit of pistol and would push against my cultural norms. As years went by, my family accepted that I wanted to be an artist. I married my best friend and advocate, had two beautiful sons and continued making and teaching art. It was not easy. No not at all. I did my best wearing all the hats expected of women…and hopefully, I will be forgiven where I may have neglected going to my son’s Little League Game that Saturday when I was teaching at LACMA. The art world then and still is a “good-ol’-boy club”…it is not an easy path to take. Our culture says it supports the artist but often times the product becomes a commodity of exchange. The artist, all the while desires more than anything to sit in silence making beauty in their studios. The role of choosing to be an artist is always a fragile balance. Would I take this path as an artist again? I would have it no other way.
My advice to young artists has always been…Constantly learn about your craft, whether it be the history, the tools and or the available new materials and medias. ALWAYS show up and do the work…NEVER stop making your art, whether it be in the garage after tucking in your children to bed, in a sketchbook between night shifts, early in the morning before the rest of the world wakes up and distracts your creative process with their unrelenting chatter. Know your personal truth. Do your work exceeding well. Be consistent with your creative vision. I recently was given notice to vacate my beautiful loft studio of 20 years. I had a space that many envied. But a day did not go by that I was not grateful, sincerely grateful. I was a part of an arts community that accepted my determined focus to work in silence and alone. But…I am being asked to begin again…to set up my studio in a smaller space and reestablish a new or not arts community five decades later. You asked, has it been smooth? The rhythm and the continuum of time creating my art was the zone, the part that was easy and a part of my life as necessary as much as breathing is. You CANNOT choose to NOT be an artist. It is who you are. It defines you and every life choice you make.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Without Art this world would not exist. Art DOES save and heal in a multitude of ways. We would not know who we are, where we came from, where we are going or our sense of place if not for the arts. I have a favorite quote by Katherine Anne Porter. It has been on my wall for the past 50 years to remind me of why I do what I do. “The arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.” Read that again…
I have no greater joy than when my work hangs in the home, the church, the spa, the educational institution, the retreat center. I love to look at the contemplative gaze of the new owners of my works. It is a savored moment. As they stand looking at my work, I feel connected to them…it is an overwhelming feeling of being silently “seen” and soulfully understood.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
What makes me happy? I suppose it is the ability to have a grateful heart in all things. I find great joy in being amid beauty whether it be in the canopy of the Redwoods, a beautiful work of art, the visceral sound of listening to a cello, sharing a meal with others, serving others with no intended outcome, coming home, knowing my loved ones are happy, being authentically “seen” and valued for who I am, to be surrounded in Sacred Quietude, to give love and to be loved, to truly forgive those who have wounded me and to have a vision of an intended painting to create and have it teach me more than anticipated in its completion.
Happiness is a relatively individual state of being. Each person has their own definition of “Happy”. Happiness is an ebb and flow. Sorrow sits with happiness and they often remind each other of the value of the other. The state of happiness often surprises when it makes itself known. It often comes in snippets and is a healing balm, it is a nod that you perhaps are on the right track. Happiness is the peace that one has when your heart is light and free from the density of the should-of, would-of and could-of…and sheltered from the world’s density.
Pricing:
My works range in price. They take approximately three months to bring to completion and often utilize goldleaf and refractive powders that often are costly. The pricing scale is from 4,000 to 8,000. I try to work with my patron with payment options as to what is best for their situation.
