Painting – The Contemporary Generation

[...] Varvara Liakounakou (Athens 1978-) has already produced a charismatic volume of work. A graduate of the Florence School of Fine Arts in painting, she has a unique ability to convince one of the very high quality of her work from the very first glance.

A natural-born painter, Liakounakou does not simply use colour; she moulds it so that it becomes fully integrated with the artistic gesture, using as its starting point the very essence of each composition. There is a silent poetry in her paintings, and because of this they communicate their meanings directly and meaningfully to the viewer. This is possible because, instead of imposing an image, they evoke a discretely charged emotional situation in the most suggestive manner that transcends the boundaries of any figure or landscape. This, in turn, evokes several other conditions and experiences, balancing them on a creative edge, a boundary between the physical and the metaphysical, the material and the spiritual, so that in her works one sees proof that spirit and matter are nothing but the two faces of one supreme truth: the energy that defines the universe.

Figures-creatures, melancholic faces, others suspended in expectation and emotionally charged figures, emerge organically tied to nature and its juices. The figures painted by Liakounakou depict well-meaning elemental spirits that truly enchant us. What is portrayed here is the idea, and not the imitation, of her subject matter; in this she conforms to the definition Plato gave to art, namely that for an art to be authentic it must evoke an Idea and not an imitation of reality [...]

Dora Rogan

(From the foreword in Album – The American College of Greece, catalogue of the Graduates of the American College of Greece Exhibition, curated by Dora Rogan, 2006)