Christopher Theofanous

Christopher Theofanous is deeply enamoured with Byzantine sensibilities. His studio glistens with the memory of Scheveningen Old Holland red, Venetian yellows and dark violets forming proskynesis, kisses of colour, across the surfaces of painted eikones. Vibrant pigments swirl and shimmer on paper, canvas, and pine establishing the ground of an aesthetic and conceptual journey to 15th-century Constantinople, the enduring heart of the Greek people.

Theofanous’ visual practice contemplates and romanticises the diasporic studios of 16th-century Venice, Crete, and Cyprus, retracing the visual grandeur of Maniera Greca Orthodox icons and the marble architectural triumphs that once housed them. The evolution of the visual language of late Roman Orthodox iconographers is further pursued through painting.

Neither a theologian nor a nonbeliever, Theofanous looks to painting as an act of faith.