Eva Fakatselis | Paintings | 2020-2021

I am an American artist—living and working in Costa Rica since 2019–who works primarily in painting, watercolor and collage. My formal vocabulary is indebted to my personal biography; classical motifs from my Greek heritage, for example, appear alongside evocations of the natural world that surround me in Central America. Such explicit self-exploration through studio practice is tantamount to my recent recovery from cancer: my various modes of self-portraiture tackle the cyclical themes of personal growth—to witness, confront and transform, again and again. Whether caught in the sinewy limbs of a dense forest or floating in an oceanic swath of blue, my face, body and organs appear in my work to register that struggle of journeying through and between states of being. Likewise, my more abstract works align with the sensory experience of reawakening; their hypnotic bursts of vibrant colors and vivid patterning capture the eye and yet free the mind to roam in its imaginative associations.