Born in the
Netherlands. Art, history and travelling have been my lifelong passions.
I have a
B.A. in Egyptology from State University of Groningen. During my studies in
Cairo with a scholarship from the Arab Republic of Egypt I took the opportunity
to travel extensively in Egypt. I have been a member of the excavation teams of
the Brooklyn Museum in Luxor and I acted
as tour guide with groups of Dutch tourists.
After I met
Lord William Taylour, a British archeologist well known for his work on Mycenae,
the focus of my interest shifted to Greece. Until his death in 1989, I
travelled every summer in the company of Lord William through Europe, the
Balkans and Greece. As a member of Lord
William’s expedition team in the Archeological Museum of Nauplia I learned to
draw archeological objects.
Since 1985
I live in Greece, where I got married to my Greek husband Panagiotis, with whom I have a son Spyros Tragas, who now studies in Groningen, the Netherlands. For more than
twenty years I lived in the closed community
of the little village of Afissou, Laconia, working in the coffee-house of my
husband and in the orange- and olive groves of the family. A few years ago I moved to Sparta.
In 1996 I
remembered my love and talent for painting and since then I’ve spent all my
time painting. I’ve devoted myself to painting the many different aspects of
rural life and landscape in Laconia. I
find my inspiration in what I’ve grown accustomed to call “ the garden
of Menelaos ”: the by Mount Taygetos dominated
Laconian landscape around Sparta in rural Peloponnese, with donkeys and sheep, olive groves and olive-picking farmers, the Menelaion, temple to
Helen and her husband Menelaos, Mystras, with a fortress and castle built by
Frankish crusader knights and with many Byzantine churches with well-preserved wall
paintings and last, but not least the ruins
of once mighty Sparta.
I painted my first oil
portrait of my namesake grandmother when
I was seventeen; it still adorns one of the walls in the house of my mother. I
prefer to use oil paints when I paint a portrait because I find that it
provides me with the means to achieve a near lifelike result.
I work from photos which
gives me the opportunity to work on the portrait as often and as long as I feel
necessary. I am happy to take
commissions.
When I visit my
homeland Groningen in the Netherlands I always feel the need to paint the beautiful landscape, but for lack of time I usually have
to be contented with taking photographs which I work from later on in my
studio. I feel that watercolor is the ideal medium for painting the
water-dominated landscape.
Apart from
being a “writer of life” or zographos,
which is the Greek word for painter, I am also a “writer of images” or
eikonographos, in its Anglicized form iconographer. I paint Byzantine icons. The
orthodox believe that the icon plays a role in the salvation of man. They
believe that man was created in the image of God but that man allowed that
image, and with it the world, to be corrupted. When God assumed a fully human
nature without ceasing to be fully God He thereby restored the image. Venerating
an icon or image of Christ, which is the affirmation of the reconciliation of
the human and the divine, the orthodox believe
that they are enabled to
contemplate the person who is the model for their theosis or union with God. Realism in byzantine iconography is absent,
because it would merely reproduce the likeness of the world in a state of
corruption. The way in which the themes
are depicted is standardized, since the purpose of an image is not to display
artistic originality but to reveal the subject's deeper, immutable meaning.
For a great number of
years I have been working on a freelance basis for the Ministry of Culture of Greece
drawing pottery excavated in Laconia at different sites and from different
periods.
Since 2006
I have been conducting courses in oil painting.
I have
taken part in several group exhibitions in the Netherlands as well as in
Greece. In December 2011 I had my first solo exhibition in the Cultural Center
of Sparta which was a great success.
Currently I
am working on a new series of paintings in which water plays the leading role.
