Freedom Within Painting

Efi Chrysi was born on 17 June 1961 in Athens, Greece. After graduating from Pierce College in 1979, she furthered her studies at the School of Social Workers at the Institute of Higher Social Work in Athens. She then went on to study Interior Decoration and Design at the Inchbald School of Design in London. Her father was a manufacturer of buildings. Between 1980-1985 she attended lessons in architectural design with Alekos Kalligas and Vasilis Lezos. This experience imparted to her a love of geometry and lines. Visiting art exhibitions, she became attracted to Optical Art, a modern method of painting concerning the interaction between picture plane and illusion, between seeing and understanding. In 1980 she began creating works by using the grid, following in the traces of optical art, with a manifest passion for the lines, color and light. She acquired a surprisingly steady hand, which allows her to use the brush like a pencil. Her art is always under her own control, within rules and limits. Such control explains her further love of symmetry. However, she invests the system she applies with great imagination of colours and shapes. Over time her love of colours turned to facility in tonal relationships. The challenge for Chrysi is to choose various chromatic tones that lead to visual harmony. She selects bold colour combinations. Her colours are not pre-fabricated, but she herself mixes them and personally produces specific tones. She often creates compositions as complementary pairs, positive and negative, which indicate a deep and unbreakable bond between them. She further relates the geometric shapes with concepts – the circle with life, the pyramid with exaltation, and the square with logic. Her subjects are inspired as much from nature as the science of geometry – stars and sea stars, suns and moons, waves and pebbles, mills and pyramids, planets and totems, cubes and balls, swords and scales. Creation for Chrssi is a sweet solitude. Art travels her incredibly and she patiently endures countless hours of work. Her works relate to an alternative world – the visual infinity. In actual fact the compositions of Chrysi may be based on finite materials, but they extend beyond the limitations of time and space, potentially towards infinity. Her desire is with her works to invite the world to see colours and shapes anew. The art of Efi Chrysi demonstrates the miracle that the human hand may create when there is will and vision.