LP6 Painting

I am Yannis, a designer, artist, thinker, creative person, or whatever you wanna call it, based in Leiden, The Netherlands. I was born in Athens, Greece and from a young age I shared my passion for painting within the walls of my childhood room (and sometimes painting on the walls as well, thank god my mom was cool with it). Growing up I discovered design, and later digital design, which is something I still practice. While I am still working as a digital product designer, I missed the hands-on aspect of creativity. I have gotten sick of having my butt glued to a chair staring at the screen(s) in front of me. So here we are now. My art is an exploration of trying to figure out what makes me happy and what expresses me. I wanna believe that my art has a base, which is a play with color and shapes in a minimalistic form, and then gets split into two aspects. An ongoing exploration of daily meditation. Art has had many forms in its history, but it is rarely used as an object that serves some kind of purpose in someone’s life. In the practice of meditation we are trying to find what we call “anchors” for our attention. So that every time our mind follows a thought and drifts away from our intention, we can then bring out attention back to that anchor. Usually, this anchor is the breath, but not everyone finds this helpful or even possible in some cases. My goal is to create pieces of art that help you focus on your intention while meditating, or simply need something to help you relax your mind and focus on the present moment of your life. Adding humor(?) to the mix. While a finished painting can encapsulate the artist’s need for expression, I still see it as an empty canvas (pun not intended). I am wildly influenced by graphic design from my work experience and big, bold, courageous marketing copy is one of my guilty pleasures. So, I was like, fuck it. I’ll vandalize my paintings with some funny, rude, or straight-out inappropriate messaging. Whether people like it or not, little do I care, I find it very amusing. No one said a painting can’t be funny. There is something about creating a painting with a lot of attention, and then going over it with a freaking marker, that makes it very satisfying, and stressful at the same time. Yes, this is one of the ways I get my dopamine hit.