Art in the library – Galiano

The paintings of Mayrena Valladeris-Mills will be featured in the Catherine Holohan Gallery during the months of August and September.

Artist Statement

It gives me joy to be able to create something with colour, line, light and shadow.

My creative aim is trying to express the inexpressible. The beauty of visual art is that the observer is the one finishing the painting, the one giving it its meaning. I search for the consciously unseen, unspoken, misunderstood, overlooked, or merely ignored, those unknowns that catch on the hooks of our subconscious. Then I strive to mix those expressions and abstractions with a feeling of solitude, a state of utter peacefulness of being with yourself and understanding the inevitability of alienation we all feel with or without others.

At the moment, two themes I’m exploring in my art are solitude and transformation or change. What I find fascinating is that the mind is both afraid of solitude and change but within ourselves there is an Awareness that we need those experiences if we are to evolve. Whether they manifest in simple observations of flowers or the existential questions we struggled with during Covid, both quiet solace and the experience of change often need to happen if one is to transcend to a new understanding.

Technically, my artistic journey has been influenced by the old masters as well as modern and contemporary artists. I am often fascinated with chiaroscuro, the interconnectedness of light and dark, how it depicts those dualities in objects and life forms and in all our journeys, the external and internal ones. With abstract expression I aim to explore our often chaotic and creative inner landscapes as we journey to make friends with our higher and lower selves –our radiant and shadow selves.

“Transforming Solitudes” is a body of works that explores the themes I’ve mentioned above.

Click poster for more information