JOHNIENE PAPANDREAS

BIO

Johniene Papandreas was trained as a Theatrical Scenic Designer and practiced her craft in the New York theatre from 1979-84. In 1984 she took her skills to the world of Corporate Theatre and Events, designing Broadway-scale productions for major corporations launching new concepts and products. Her travels in the heightened world of the theatre and the sometimes surreal world of Corporate America contribute largely to the subtext and insights into human nature she explores in her paintings and portraits.


STATEMENT

I have a fascination with subtext, with reading between the lines, tuning in to the unspoken. Mine are portraits of imagined selves, damaged, passionate, and hidden selves. Expressions captured of a moment thought private, unobserved, before the retreat...before the walls go up. Guided by past Masters, passionate in their revelation of the human condition, I seek out the souls that populate their paintings...the complex expressions, hidden agendas, and faces stripped of artifice, laid bare by ecstasy. Lifting them out of their place and time I take them as my models. I listen carefully and translate. In the resulting paintings, our eyes meet theirs...something is familiar...we connect, and across the centuries spirits speak.