Eva Paraskeva, a native of Etolikon in Hellas, currently resides in Athens where she practices her artistic endeavours, specialising in pen and ink drawing.
In the year 1990, she had the opportunity to work with Artoon Entertainment, the pioneer animation studio in Hellas. By the following year, she had successfully completed a series of painting courses at Athens College.
Her artistic creations have been showcased in a multitude of galleries and art venues throughout Hellas, with a notable exhibition at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in 2018.
She made a remarkable contribution to a competition hosted by a prominent Athens radio station, themed Me Too, echoing the contemporary movement of the same name. Her artwork, titled ‘Movement – Flexibility’, was chosen from among 250 entries and received recognition.
Her prowess extends to the realm of poetry as well. In 2015, three of her poems were featured in Fryctories Magazine, an online cultural publication, and were subsequently republished in the poetic anthology Archive of Civilization by the esteemed online cultural institution, Archeion Politismou, in early 2016. One of her poems was even adapted into a song and included in a CD titled Eleven Lyrics Creators, released by the Municipality of Chalandri (Athens) in 2016. This CD was the focal point of a concert at the Ravine Theatre.
In the artist’s own words: ‘My birthplace is Etolikon, a quaint island nestled in the Missolonghi lagoon.
The unique and contrasting landscapes of the area sparked my artistic abilities from a young age.
At the tender age of 10, my artistic potential was recognised by my peers and family members. I utilise rhyme as a means of self-expression and lines to portray my emotions and experiences.
Both lyricism and painting have been my passions since then, serving as outlets for my authentic self and integral parts of my life. There have been phases in my life when I was deeply engrossed and inspired by them. My inspiration allowed me to break free from the void of reality.
Consequently, in 2015, I made a complete career shift, liberating myself from the harsh realities of the business industry, and rekindled my love for painting.
My creative journey encompassed seminars on self-awareness, alternative healing, lyricism, graphology, and numerology. These experiences further ignited my inspiration, enabling me to fully express my creativity.‘
Curator’s note: The starkness and unadorned nature of pen and ink drawing artwork may indeed pose a test to the artist’s ingenuity. Ink illustrations are typically marked by an emotive minimalist style that emerges from the utterly pristine and lucid composition. However, this very purity has the potential to expose the artist to critique, as the stark contrast with the white canvas offers no margin for slip-ups.
Within these parameters, employing inks with such adeptness, Eva Paraskeva, on her expansive or more compact paper canvases, succeeds in delineating layered sketches of her psyche, and transcripts of influences transmitted through her environment. Drawn with knowledge, her ink creations carry a graphic expressive power that adds on her signature artistic verbal idiom. All strokes convey wisdom and strength, communicate cognition and sentiment, and when assembled, form a delicate amalgamation, with no jest intended.
In Eva Paraskeva’s lively pictorial universe, the sketches, infused with the luminous bleached paper foundation, propel the portrayed components to the brink of innovative, kinetic abstraction, while the strokes assume an existence of their own. Through the suggestive malleability of her adaptable artistic vernacular, the shapes that emerge instil an entranced depiction of vividly remembered characteristics from recollections and perception, rendering her ink illustrations approachable and not at all daunting.
Particularly Eva Paraskeva’s most recent collection of work mirrors a progression of instinct and methodology acquired over her fruitful years -from her initial aesthetic teachings in youth to her present artistic competencies and practices- enchanted by the aspiration of the self-realisation objectives she chases; a perpetual enlightening exploration that has, over the years, further refined her overall way of thinking.