Eva Fakatselis
Blood Lines
Prayer Trees
Nature Abstracts
Pacific Color Palettes
Self Portraits
Field Guide to Cancer
Sketchbooks
Exhibitions
Selected Available Works
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Eva Fakatselis (b. 1981, Hinsdale, IL) is a Greek-American artist—living and working in Costa Rica since 2019 who works primarily in watercolor and mixed media as well as painting and sculpture. Fakatselis’ formal vocabulary is indebted to her personal biography; Classical and Byzantine motifs from her Greek heritage, for example, appear alongside evocations of the natural world that surround her in Central America. Her various modes of self-exploration tackle the themes of health, spirituality and identity through the creation of a personal iconography.
Artist Statement
The original catalyst for my art practice was born of my battle with blood cancer in 2017, which had a metamorphosis effect on my life. I explore themes of overcoming fear and illness, the inner landscape of the body and the ways we are connected to each other and to the natural world. These become especially apparent when uncovering the many parallels in seemingly disparate human mythologies and tapping into the collective unconscious from a place of creative inspiration and daily practice. Out of all this has come a preoccupation with blood, circulatory systems, the role of prayer and miracles in daily life and the desire to delve deeper into identity, and has led me to develop a personal iconography. This impulse has stemmed from growing up Greek Orthodox, with all its mystery, icons and rituals combined with my grandmother’s fervent belief in prayer and the impact this has had on me. Though I feel deeply engaged by the intimacy and potency of Byzantine iconography, I find it can be limited because of its history – typically the purview of organized religion, priests and men. With my work I am asserting an alternate context, integrating techniques and symbolism from the history of illumination and iconography with my personal belief system and my surrounding natural world.
Living in Costa Rica, I derive profound inspiration from the forces of nature, the circadian rhythms and the bright green fertility; it is a technicolor world. I am drawn to stories of people transforming into plant and animal forms, as well as the transmutation of the individual from the physical to the spiritual realm, and the catalysts that bridge this journey. In my work, I explore the Plumeria tree as a central icon, its fractal patterns mirroring the human circulatory system, and more recently I have entered into the arterial system, exploring this in a more abstract and intuitive way. These trees, sometimes more figuratively represented and other times more abstractly as the notion of forest, are metaphors for ourselves, and represent the very nature of life that transpires between earth and sky, being grounded in a physical world while reaching for the divine.
Recent Exhibitions and Installations
2024
Solo Show, Blood Lines, Campo, Nosara, Costa Rica, March.
Group Show, Beneath the Surface, Campo, Nosara, Costa Rica, June.
Sound Installation, Echo, Campo, Nosara, Costa Rica (with Petros Tatsiopoulos), March.
2023
Solo Show, Prayer Trees, Campo, Nosara, Costa Rica, April.
Semi-Permanent Installation, A Year Lived in Color, La Salita, Nosara, Costa Rica.
2022
Solo Show, Spirit of Place, Campo, Nosara, Costa Rica, March.
2021
Semi-Permanent Installation, Pacific Color Palettes, Outpost, Nosara, Costa Rica.
Education
Fakatselis holds a B.A. from Brown University in Providence, RI where she studied Visual Art, History of Art and International Relations, and a M.A. from The Architectural Association in London in Histories and Theories of Architecture.
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