My anchoring roots and creative foundation come from my early years growing up in two cottages—one that my parents built on my grandparents’ farm in Maryland—the other which my great-grandparents built in a fishing village on an island in Greece. As a kid, in my mind, my father was like Odysseus, and my parents’ love story was legendary. Their story being: my dad bought a boat in Hawaii, set off to sail around the world using only the stars as his guide, finding crew along the way, and after four years at sea, he fell in love with my mom on a Greek Island. My sister and I came along soon after. We were blessed with a childhood where we were surrounded by, and encouraged to explore the great outdoors. There were always lots of kids around, and we were left free to roam outside like “wild things” for hours on end. We were constantly in motion: crabbing off friends’ piers, wading in streams, sailing, swimming, and ice skating on the Chesapeake Bay, jumping off of cliffs and looking for sunken treasures in the Aegean Sea, hanging out in trees, chasing fireflies, riding sleds, and racing around on bikes, roller skates, and ponies.
Some of my happiest memories during this time are of spending time with my dad in his workshop, watching him sketch, measure, cut, build, or fix something. As soon as I was able to adeptly use my hands, I became his apprentice, handing him tools and hardware, while learning the proper terminology for each. Very quickly I graduated to handling the tools on my own: the vice, level, saws, hammers, drills, etc. At the same time I was also learning from my mom, helping with her seamstress projects, and working with my grandparents in their gardens and orchard. I was also constantly drawing and coloring, and “reading” lots of “picture books,“ many of the illustrations and vibrant colors of which are still vivid in my mind to this day.
In this state of absolute freedom, my imagination and love for nature grew, and these early experiences are what I credit for the organic nature of both my work and lifestyle; rarely will you find a straight line in either my artwork or in the path that I have chosen to walk in my life. In this way, my life and work are inextricably linked—I am constantly searching for something different, a deeper meaning, and a sense of freedom with as few restrictions as possible—and it’s when I’m in the creative zone that I am most able to access, and reflect through visual images, this state of being. It naturally follows that my creative process itself is also very organic: starting with an abstract idea, which is often times driven by an emotion, I make a random mark, and let the image reveal itself through freestyle drawing. As I live with a work in progress, and it grows over time, I add detail and color to create movement and enhance the visceral charge of each piece. Part of my detail work includes the use of symbols from a personal lexicon that has continued to develop as my work has continued to evolve—these symbols provide a common thread that has run through my body of work for years.
The majority of my current work is two-dimensional, with a three-dimensional influence, as I am formally trained as a sculptor. I’ve been told that my sculpted field-scapes create a new dimension—evocative, emotional, and intuitive—where scale is both disruptive and eruptive. In any given piece, I may display a microscopic cellular level, the interplanetary, or that which lies in between. Thematically, my inspiration comes from personal experiences—both past and present—merged with broader thoughts about body/mind/spirit/nature/human connections and interactions. Or inspiration could also come from something as simple as a song I’ve been listening to which is evoking a feeling or a sense of nostalgia. In some ways, my drawings are like a map of a journey through my thoughts and emotions, with no beginning or end, just visual references to experiences and memories, all jumbled together abstractly. And although personal in meaning, my goal is for the path of discovery to continue with all those who engage with my work, so the viewer can have their own personal experience with, and interpretation of, the meaning of any given piece.
My body of work from 2015-2019 was completed after the loss of my wonderful mother, Maria, in 2014. The drawings reflect loss, grief, growth, transformation, renewal, and love. Additionally, my parents, their story and their extraordinary selves, the childhood they blessed me with, their unwavering love for me—and also their complicated divorce after 18 years of marriage, being a caregiver for my mom as she battled a crippling illness for almost a decade, my father’s late-onset struggle with bi-polar disorder, and his recent death in 2019, are all driving forces behind my ongoing work. I live and create in San Francisco, California, and on Paros Island, Greece. ❤️
Some of my happiest memories during this time are of spending time with my dad in his workshop, watching him sketch, measure, cut, build, or fix something. As soon as I was able to adeptly use my hands, I became his apprentice, handing him tools and hardware, while learning the proper terminology for each. Very quickly I graduated to handling the tools on my own: the vice, level, saws, hammers, drills, etc. At the same time I was also learning from my mom, helping with her seamstress projects, and working with my grandparents in their gardens and orchard. I was also constantly drawing and coloring, and “reading” lots of “picture books,“ many of the illustrations and vibrant colors of which are still vivid in my mind to this day.
In this state of absolute freedom, my imagination and love for nature grew, and these early experiences are what I credit for the organic nature of both my work and lifestyle; rarely will you find a straight line in either my artwork or in the path that I have chosen to walk in my life. In this way, my life and work are inextricably linked—I am constantly searching for something different, a deeper meaning, and a sense of freedom with as few restrictions as possible—and it’s when I’m in the creative zone that I am most able to access, and reflect through visual images, this state of being. It naturally follows that my creative process itself is also very organic: starting with an abstract idea, which is often times driven by an emotion, I make a random mark, and let the image reveal itself through freestyle drawing. As I live with a work in progress, and it grows over time, I add detail and color to create movement and enhance the visceral charge of each piece. Part of my detail work includes the use of symbols from a personal lexicon that has continued to develop as my work has continued to evolve—these symbols provide a common thread that has run through my body of work for years.
The majority of my current work is two-dimensional, with a three-dimensional influence, as I am formally trained as a sculptor. I’ve been told that my sculpted field-scapes create a new dimension—evocative, emotional, and intuitive—where scale is both disruptive and eruptive. In any given piece, I may display a microscopic cellular level, the interplanetary, or that which lies in between. Thematically, my inspiration comes from personal experiences—both past and present—merged with broader thoughts about body/mind/spirit/nature/human connections and interactions. Or inspiration could also come from something as simple as a song I’ve been listening to which is evoking a feeling or a sense of nostalgia. In some ways, my drawings are like a map of a journey through my thoughts and emotions, with no beginning or end, just visual references to experiences and memories, all jumbled together abstractly. And although personal in meaning, my goal is for the path of discovery to continue with all those who engage with my work, so the viewer can have their own personal experience with, and interpretation of, the meaning of any given piece.
My body of work from 2015-2019 was completed after the loss of my wonderful mother, Maria, in 2014. The drawings reflect loss, grief, growth, transformation, renewal, and love. Additionally, my parents, their story and their extraordinary selves, the childhood they blessed me with, their unwavering love for me—and also their complicated divorce after 18 years of marriage, being a caregiver for my mom as she battled a crippling illness for almost a decade, my father’s late-onset struggle with bi-polar disorder, and his recent death in 2019, are all driving forces behind my ongoing work. I live and create in San Francisco, California, and on Paros Island, Greece. ❤️
