Growing up in a home of fashion designers made it easy for me to have access to markers, paints, and papers in order to be creative from a very young age. Thus, I’ve been painting all my life, acrobating between styles and media for the first couple of decades of my practice. During that time, I studied social anthropology in order to find out a bit more about the rest of the world and fell in love with my studies, I worked as a field researcher for cultural programs, I organized art exhibitions with artists and friends, I took contemporary dance lessons and worked in the family fashion business.
Beside this busy life, I never gave up on my art practice until my early thirties, when I went through a deeply stressful period. That led me to not making any art for three whole years, and that is a long time. I guess it was a period of introspection, that somehow led to a new beginning concerning my practice. It was in 2016 when I grabbed my paints and brushes once more and, to my surprise, a whole new abstract style had emerged for me. In the next couple of years, it was pure experimentation with different media until I found what touches me the most and keeps me consistent with my style and practice.
Today, and for the last five years, I’ve been exploring the act and notion of transformation and purging, as past works are cut, destroyed, altered, and remade into a new visual outcome. My mixed media abstract paintings derive from a process-based approach and are produced through personal and experiential research, which is inspired by the study of social science, psychology, and the philosophy of science. The making is related to deep internal processes and the observation of the inner self, as it interacts with the 3d reality we embark on. A sense of catharsis and metamorphosis occurs while cutting out pieces of past canvases, creating openings and holes that are to be filled with dense materials right from the start, attempting to narrate a story with personal as well as existential references.
As it seems to me now, that three-year break from making art was necessary for me to discover more about myself, re-invent my personal mythology and reconnect with my spiritual nature. All of this, still drives me into making art, exploring myself, my practice and new routes for being in this bizarre, but so inspiring world.
You can view my work and contact me on my website: https://www.eiriniliaskou.com/
Eirini Liaskou