Deeply wondrous, luminous with light, and shimmering with meaning, Angelica Sotiriou’s art touches the eye, heart, and soul of the viewer. Her work embodies a sense of spiritual presence, generating a collective awe in those witnessing her paintings, drawings, and mixed media pieces.
According to Sotiriou, “My work has always come from the deepest place of my prayer life. Be it finding beauty in the world or the darkness that invades our good intentions, my works take the sacred and secular and use them to create my abstract narratives.”
Her sense of purpose and meaning has not changed over the years, even as her techniques or mediums shift. “My works have not deviated from my internal focus of one’s life journey. I started out painting, using other-worldly, intensely brilliant color transparencies on canvas. I continued with creating bigger than life handmade paper bas-reliefs, dealing with the plight of young womanhood and the spiritual journey of transfiguration,” she says. And in the meantime, she notes that she’s “always loved [the] energetic movement of soft graphite on large sheets of rag paper. Early in my career, they were autobiographical abstracts. These works eventually evolved into spiritual landscapes with the focus on the visceral search for Light.”
Today, the artist has combined these techniques and mediums, shaping thematically imagined landscapes. She relates that she is “still searching for Light…still energetic…still [creating] larger than life narratives. Thematically, I have attempted to meld the secular and the sacred in each new work using mixed media.”
Asked which mediums she prefers, Sotiriou says that she loves “the energetic line work of soft graphite, acrylic brushwork, interference pigments, transparencies and I have incorporated the line work into my subtle mixed media painterly abstract narratives.” She wants viewers to “look long enough to see the multiple layers of dark to light pigment, water soluble graphite, and interference pigments” that make up individual works.
Sotiriou’s newest works “deal with the notion of longing for home and the familiar, our earth as home, stewardship, the sacred, the secular and the ache that comes from wanting to go home to a place that may not have ever existed.”
As profound as it is beautiful and involving, Sotiriou’s stunning art will be on view at Diversions Fine Arts Gallery in Manhattan Beach, August 1st. In September, she will be sharing another large body of her work at Kipos Gallery/Trinity San Pedro, as well as several works at the Pacific Unitarian Gallery in Palos Verdes. In November, she’ll be showing some work at “Art At Dark”, St. Katherine GOC, Redondo Beach.
The artist has been creating her powerful work for 56 years, and for each of those years, she says that her images have asked “my viewer to sit with them for more than a few moments and to explore the layers of marks and pigments, to tap into the energy of the compositions and to explore where their own sensibilities reside in each work.” She adds that “There is a narrative in each work; if you listen close enough you will find your answer.”
For all those seeking answers, or simply the beauty of life itself, visit the artist’s exhibition of both large scale and small works at Diversions Fine Arts Gallery, 1069 N. Aviation Blvd. in Manhattan Beach. Opening reception is 4-7, August 1st; regular gallery hours are 12-4, Thursday-Sunday.
– Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist