Art is a major chapter in the life of Maria Spyraki and an overall one-way option for her. She has studied architecture and worked as an architect prior to completely devoting herself to fine art. She has experimented with public art forms, like graffiti and street art, before surrendering to the allure of painting. The artist believes that experimentation and mindfulness in process fuel the evolution of contemporary art. What mostly intrigues her is the conceptual adaptation of the self through the study of form and internality of the subject. She believes that art is a social diagram that accelerates the evolution of the human. Most of Spyraki’s paintings feature the same subject in different emotional,psychological and mental states – one could say there is an autobiographical element about them. Feelings like fear, perversion, anxiety, freedom and finally redemption are ever present in her work.

My work explores the notion self-metamorphosis. Abstract machines and their functionality in the social context that we live in and their notion of desire as a power of evolution, are the main aspects of my paintings. Form and function, freedom and imprisonment, abundance and scarcity, extroversion and introversion are all concepts that have to do with opposition and contradiction. The paintings on display negotiate escapism. Escapism is the act of mentally  diverting from unpleasant or boring aspects of daily life, typically through activities involving imagination or entertainment. Escapism may be used to occupy one’s self away from persistent feelings of depression or general sadness. Escapism could be battled by wearing a mask of joy, by presenting a different self than what one is, by presenting exactly the opposite of what one feels. A tool for escaping what’s real, the mask allows one to live in a fantastic and idealized social context.