BLUE SHUTTERS STUDIO | ART by Victoria Kapsambelis
I am a contemporary mix media artist influenced by how color, texture, and emotion reflect in the human face and upon our natural landscapes.
My studies were in science, and my career path led me into technology, all very fitting for my very linear brain. I’m a rule follower, I tend toward black and white thinking, like the colors of my wardrobe. Even as a child I rejected fantasy of any kind, and while I always drew inside the lines, I began to see the world around me in graphic patterns. Everything was askew, but in relation to what stood beside it, even the most mundane of things became something of beauty. I found calm in the precise alignment and balance of objects and color.
By chance, I was offered an opportunity to change the orbit of my career and I became a graphic designer. It was an effortless transition. It drew me into a world of creativity, but there were still rules. While design in nature is seemingly random, there is science behind how and why we see things the way we do. I needed to step away from the rules. I needed to draw outside the lines.
I purchased paints and canvases and brushes. I found myself staring a lot. I stared at people, at clouds, at street signs, at cracks in cement. I stared at life in all its color and wonder, and it began to squeeze its way out through my brush, typically in distorted and exaggerated angles and shapes. I tilted and layered and textured reality with unnatural colors and distorted perspectives. People emerged, landscapes took form, abstractions filled canvases.
My art became a contradiction of myself, a rejection of my precise world view. My art is not themed. I have no idea where or how or why it originates. It just comes out of me. I cannot control it. I cannot walk up to a canvas and paint with motive or purpose. It comes or it doesn’t.
My latest work came to life during the initial covid pandemic shutdown. I found myself drawn back to the studio where previous paintings were stacked against a wall. I had not painted in a while. I consciously began to morph my existing paintings, but without intent, a theme began to take shape, one of faceless figures searching, hiding, all bursting with color in a plea to be released from isolation.