Transcendant – The Art of Angelica Sotiriou – San Pedro Art Walk

The San Pedro art walk continues to be a wonderful opportunity to find exciting art. A highlight of this month’s  walk was discovering the work of artist Angelica Sotiriou. Her paintings have a mystical, magical quality that draws the viewer into her unique vision.

“It’s my voice. I’ve known since I was a child, the only way I can survive is my art. It’s my world,” Sotiriou says. Working with acrylics, she considers herself a contemplative, narrative painter. “My work – I get lost in it. It’s like little portals have opened.” Viewed, this makes perfect sense. Spend any time looking at the paintings and there is the sensation of being pulled into the paintings.

“All my pieces have to do with looking for light,” Sotiriou relates. Viewing her paintings with their mix of deep blues, rich gold, and shimmering white, she has found it. There is a dimensional quality to her work that reaches beneath the surface of the canvas, and exudes spirituality.  The golds and blues have the resonance of 12th Century icons that have time traveled to the present. When first viewed, we were unaware that the artist was raised in a Greek Orthodox family, or that she had incorporated her religious faith into her paintings. And yet, knowing none of this, to the viewer, her work radiantly expresses pure faith, wonder, and belief. Possibly the best way to describe these pieces is transcendent.

In Sotiriou’s studio, the artist’s work, past, present, and in process, all stunningly present images of light and life. “For the first 20 years I created large narrative bas-relief figurative sculptures. Currently I’m working on a crepuscular series, inspired by the beauty of light coming through clouds.”  On her website, the artist says “My recent drawings and paintings have been a personal journey of uncovering and revealing pathways, windows and portals of light and of spirit.” The paintings seem to glow, as if light came from inside the canvas, or the canvas itself was a window.

While many of the artist’s works are large scale, averaging 8′ by 4′, some are more diminutive in size.

The artist has this quote posted around her gallery and studio:

“I don’t know how
But suddenly there is no darkness left at all
The sun has poured itself inside me
From a thousand wounds.”  – Nikoforos Vretakos

Sotiriou has taught art throughout California, and holds masters degrees from UCLA.  From sculptural pieces to acrylic paintings, the artist has been exhibiting in San Pedro since 2001. See her astonishing work at Loft 2, Second Floor gallery  at 401 Mesa Street in San Pedro.

• Genie Davis; Photos by Jack Burke and courtesy of artist