Original URL: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-angelica-sotiriou-2/
We were lucky to catch up with Angelica Sotiriou recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Angelica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I was a very shy child. However, that shyness gave me the opportunity to be an astute observer. As an empath, I could spend hours out in our back lawn, looking up at the clouds and being awed by the glorious, continual moving shapes of the cumulous formations. My grandfather owned rental properties and would often bring me items, that had been left behind by former tenants, that he knew I would love. The most cherished find was a large, almost new, watercolor set. I was seven years old. I did not have brushes, but, I had finger-tips. I remember seeing a Monet painting in a storybook. I was fascinated by the colors overlapping and emitting a vibrancy I had never seen before. On the backside of a manila envelope, I created my first abstract. It was a jumble of colors, but, it was pure alchemy for me. It was the first time in my young life I felt I had a voice. It was my voice. As my education continued, I was often called upon by my thoughtful teachers to illustrate a book, a season, or our bulletin boards. Through high school, under the direction of my art instructor, I enrolled in college as an artist with a Fine Arts major. My life has been blessed. As my skill as an artist became honed, my voice found it’s strength and I passed on my love of the arts as an art instructor, teaching art as an elementary art specialist, a museum educator, teaching art to at-risk teens, and finding my way as a university adjunct professor. I have always had a studio space where my shyness became my strength and silence was my elixir.
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?
Tenacity. Creative lens. Perseverance. After receiving my Masters of Fine Arts from UCLA I worked in many art related fields. I was a add builder for a newspaper, I taught art in a pre-school, I sold art supplies, I created murals for theme parks, I worked in art fairs, I ran galleries, and I found my niche in teaching art in museums, universities and arts outreach programs, all helped me to pay our bills and to anchor my sensibilities in the Arts. Erstwhile, I never stopped creating my own works. My works received some recognition when LAICA opened it’s doors in Los Angeles, late 70’s, early 80’s, and I was invited to show a few works. I tasted the sweet satisfaction of selling works and working on commissions. As a young artist, with the impetus of graduate school behind me, I showed works at The LA County Art Rental Gallery, and at several of the Cal State University Galleries early in my career. I was my own arts representative. In the 70’s and 80’s finding gallery representation was not always easy. Whether or not I was showing, I continued creating, evolving and tenaciously showing up to work on a new series of pieces. Over the five decades of creating my works, I have sold many works and shown in many venues… I never stopped creating works. Whether it was at midnight, when my sweet children were asleep, I would try to find time to create in my home studio. I never stopped creating my large body of ever evolving works. Thematically, my works have had a trajectory of dealing with the push and pull of light over darkness, the tension of polarities and how the alchemy of light plays with transparencies of layered colors and textured surfaces.
My works have always dealt thematically with the push and pull of the temporal world and the Divine, the tension between the darkness and the light becomes a pilgrimage for me. I continually worked on making visible the invisible and honoring my soul’s journey. I have always committed myself to the understanding that an artist must learn to use their tools to their full capacity, and to master the full potential of their medium. Each work I create continues to explore and manipulate paint, drawing mediums, paper and canvas with a desire to clarify their language with a respectful craftsmanship. If I am to share my “truth” on canvas and paper, I know it must be delivered in a manner that seamlessly invites my viewer to listen with the deepest part of their heart and not to be distracted by careless marks or unfinished processes. I want my viewer to find solace and a home inside of my works. I want my viewer to participate by looking at the completed works and also to listen in silence to the intimate conversation between the artwork and themselves.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I was born in the early 50’s in a small middle-class beach town in Southern California. I was born into a rich, beautiful cultural home, with a large extended family of immigrants. Honoring family and traditions, and working hard were a given in my home. It was an easier road for the males of my extended family. Education and freedom to choose a career were often an easy often for the males in our first-generation families. I, as for many women, not only had the cultural confines of what a woman should be, as lived and defined by the women of the small villages of my parent’s Greece but, also of the multiple models of the Junes of “Leave It To Beaver”‘s new American culture. The 50’s left very little room for a girl to wander into a redefinition of a women’s role in the world. Marriage, motherhood, home Economics, nursing, teaching, caregiving were categories many of us were expected to follow. These are all wonderful and fulfilling roles for a woman. But, what if you as a young woman wanted to do it all and more? These talented, smart and driven young women often were labeled “Women Libbers”. I spent my life determinedly doing it all but always feeling the pangs of the 50’s standard of being a woman.
It was not until my late fifties did I learn, yes, it is okay to be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a caregiver, a teacher, and…a brilliant, creative, ambitious, visible and a career visual artist. It has been a journey, not always easy but so very rewarding. I often think the push against the norms of my generation was the perfect impetus to drive me and move me unceasingly forward. There is a special beauty in the role of a woman artist. Our perspective is powerful and gentle, healing and disrupting, static and explosive, nurturing and repulsive. We have generations of women artists behind us that are cheering us on. As an artist, as a woman, my works are larger and bigger than I am…they are my voice. And yes, women can be exceptional, history changing artists. The key is to never stop creating (even if it is to bake a perfect loaf of bread), always show up and refine your voice so it can be palatably heard and effect promising change.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I remember decades ago, our eldest son told me, “No one will believe you exist unless you have a presence on social media.” So, with that I joined the movement and followed the noise. I have my website, a facebook presence and two Instagram accounts. Early on, I included far too much personal information on-line. But now, as I have learned to pull back on the personal, social media gives my artwork a greater visibility and some semblance of belonging to my tribe of beloved artists in the ethers. I do my best to post daily my images and progress of my works, openings and exhibitions and I often include the inspiration. I have met many in the ethers with similar mind-sets who create beautiful works. Exhibition announcements from around the world widen my artist language. Artists of every walks of life share their works that often inspire me. I share my works and find commonality. I am updated everyday as to the ever shifting and wide girth of contemporary art created by my peers. I do my best to not get sucked into the scrolling vortex of social media. I have established a block of time in the morning to post and then a slot of time in the early evening to review responses. Social media has served as a great venue to share my work and it functions as an accountability gage for me. Sharing my works regularly prompts me to continue working and to my finishing bodies of works, whether or not I receive one “like” or dozens of responses. Social media has served as a running journal of my art making and for me that is the greatest benefit. My work has benefitted by the exposure on social media. I have spent five decades of creating works and I have shown more and sold many more works now than in my early career. I have shown at Matters Studio Gallery, Wonzimer, Hermosa Gallery, NotShockBox, and Diversions Fine Arts Gallery, in various institutions and on-line shows, in just the last two years. I have sold many works by being a part of these incredible exhibitions. I attribute my social media presence to my credibility as a working studio artist. Thank you too, to Canvas Rebel.
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