Winner of “HerStory” 2021 “Outstanding Woman Artist Achievement Award”

Christina Michalopoulou, christinamichalopoulou.com, is a contemporary artist living and working in Thessaloniki, Greece. She is known for painting figurative, photorealistic human figures and parts of the body in addition to contemporary abstraction. Most often, she strives to bring the realism of her figures in contrast with an abstract, pop or minimalistic background.

Christina has participated in many international Art Fairs and gallery exhibitions and many of her artworks can be found in private collections throughout Europe. Her many honors and accolades include being chosen as a Barcelona International Big Awards 2020 Finalist for an exhibition that will take place in 2021 in Spain. She was also nominated for the Royal Arts Prize, Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, in London and was selected as an Artist of the Year Finalist by Circle Foundation for the Arts.

Most recently, Christina’s painting “Cocoon” was selected for the Manhattan Arts International “HerStory” 2020-2021 exhibition. She received an “Outstanding Woman Artist Achievement Award”, which includes this interview.

The artist also selected for “2020 “Women – Inspiring Quotes & Artistic Responses“, a published collection featuring 100 women artists from around the world.

Cocoon, oil on canvas,  27.5″ x 39.4″, from the “Selfie” series. This painting is included in the “HerStory” exhibition.

RP: For the “HerStory” competition, you submitted paintings from your mesmerizing “Selfie” series of figurative, photorealistic human figures and body parts. You wrote: “My focus is the emotional and the affective as emerging in human bodies and faces. I am interested in desire, love, obsession, sadness and elation, claustrophobia and liberation, hells and heavens. I love tracing the way the body recoils or spreads when touched, the way it flourishes or hides away when looked at.”   What is the biggest challenge you faced creating this series?

CM: My art is figurative and deeply feminine, created upon real people and real life stories. The emotional load is not easy to handle when producing these artworks, whether they are built on my story or somebody other’s. I always try to narrate a story through the lines of a body, through a scar, a wounded skin, a sight or a touch. At the beginning of every painting I fall in love with the story, the body, the skin, the feeling, I get deep into it and when it comes to an end I always feel exhausted and empty. It’ s an addiction.

Hug Me, oil and acrylic on canvas, 19.7″ x 27.5″, from the “Selfie” series.

RP: What reaction would you like viewers of your paintings to have when viewing your “Selfie” series?

CM: I guess I need them to feel, partly, what I was feeling when creating each one of them. To share the feeling. People sometimes seem shocked by my paintings, the nudity that doesn’t project beauty or youth or freshness, but focuses on reality, the truth of emotions that grow up when getting older, when being afraid, when being lonely and trying to survive in a difficult world. There is where I find beauty and there is where I would like to take the viewer to. A place that mirrors life in all it’s beautifully ugly truth.

Apology, oil on canvas, 20″ x 28″,  from the “Women of Quarantine” series.

RP: You have received many well-deserved accolades and awards. What has been the most important achievement in your art career and why?

CM: I am so grateful for having been honored with great distinctions and awards till now. But I think that the most important achievement in my art career is that I actually decided to be an artist. To leave behind the comfort zone and safety of a productive and efficient career a few years ago in order to paint and express myself through art. And it is a decision I make every morning, even at the hardest times, and always makes me so happy and proud, an award that unfortunately only a few people have the opportunity, or the fortune, or the freedom to enjoy in their life.

RP: What is the biggest project or exhibition you have planned for 2021?

CM: 2021 is a strange year, as we all know due to COVID, so I have decided to take part in just a few art events and mostly focus on my new series of paintings, called “Fragments”.  I will be taking part at Intersect Palm Springs (Art Palm Springs) in California, represented by the Algerian Gallery Altiba-9 and in summer I will be exhibiting in the beautiful Greek Islands for some time.

Fragments 2, oil on canvas, 20″ diameter, from the “Fragments” series.

RP: Please tell us more about you new “Fragments” series and its significance.

CM: My new series, “Fragments”, is a women portrait series, created by my growing urge to come in contact with the thing I mostly miss nowadays: faces. COVID has taken expressions, has taken beauty, has taken lips that smile, spit words, laugh out loud and kiss away from us.

And, this series of paintings comes to offer me a placebo, remind me of the way faces were, when lips and eyes connected, expressed feelings and whispered to ones heart.

The whole series is being left unfinished yet finished in a symbolic attach to everything that is being left unfinished during this last year. Jobs, affairs, relationships, projects, dreams, trips, expectations, all hanging loosely, almost floating under the grey pandemic sky, waiting for the wind to finally blow and clear the clouds…

Fragment 3, oil on canvas, 20″ diameter, from the “Fragments” series

RP: Why did you submit your art to “HerStory”?

CM: The concept of this exhibition reflects my values. The title, “HerStory”, is what exists behind all the artworks of the “Selfie” series. It is also an exhibition for women artists and this is very important for me. Women are struggling right now to get the place they deserve in the art scene, I believe we are in a crucial point, and taking part in exhibition that support this cause is a priority to me as a woman and an artist.

RP: What advice would you like to offer fellow women artists?

CM: To support each other and to never stop creating no matter what. Women are obliged to make more sacrifices in their life, take more difficult decisions in order to be, and remain, artists but it is worth every single try, every single day, every single step.

We are grateful to you Christina for sharing your extraordinary art and inspiration.

Learn more about the Manhattan Arts International “HerStory” 2020-2021 exhibition.

Visit Christina Michalopoulou’s website: christinamichalopoulou.com