Eva Geraki’s painting unfolds as a poetic dialogue between reality and imagination, delicately suspended between the visible and the invisible. Her work explores dreamlike landscapes, luminous colors, intertwining with nature and forming a personal mythology of light and emotion. Her practice traces a consistent search for transformation—of space, time, and perception.
Her compositions unite natural and urban elements in a state of suspension: shimmering seas, silhouettes merging with foliage, and buildings reimagined through expressive brushwork. Circular forms, shadows, and symbolic geometries evoke spiritual equilibrium, while her vibrant palette invites the viewer into a dreamlike reverie.
Color and light are central to Geraki’s visual language. The island of Symi becomes both a physical and emotional landscape—resisting the passage of time. She envisions a future world of transformation and harmony between city and nature. Influenced by pop art yet softened by lyricism, her canvases offer a “travel guide of the future,” ethereal realities where light triumphs over darkness. Using oils and acrylics, she creates a poetic reinterpretation of contemporary life, reminding viewers of the fragile but achievable balance between humanity and the natural world. Eva Geraki paints not to escape reality but to reimagine it—to offer a vision where memory, color, and emotion converge into timeless, transformative spaces.
Eva Geraki was born in Piraeus in 1976 and studied painting at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1996–2002), under the guidance of Vangelis Dimitreas. In 2021, she attended an Art Therapy seminar at the University of the Aegean, expanding her interest in the healing side of art.
Since 2004, Eva runs her own studio, CHROMA, in Piraeus, where she teaches painting to children and adults and develops art programs in collaboration with museums, municipalities, educational institutions, and private organizations. She has also created illustrations for the International Olympic Truce Centre, literary publications, and the Symi Festival. Her ceramic works inspired by the architecture of Symi were presented at the Museum of Cycladic Art shop. She has collaborated with cultural and commercial institutions, magazines, and the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT).
Her work has been exhibited in Greece and abroad. Since October 2025, she has been pursuing a Master’s degree in Visual Arts and Landscape: Approaches to Natural and Urban Space at the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, University of Western Macedonia, in Florina.
In an interview with Greek News Agenda*, Eva Geraki shares her insight on her dreamlike version of reality, cherished memories and the undeniable healing power of art.
Your works present a dreamlike version of reality. What led you to this approach?
Magical realism in my work is a conscious choice; it is the way I see and interpret the world around me. Through the subjects I focus on, I seek to find balance between nature and the urban environment — a dialogue that forms the conceptual foundation of my practice. In an effort to illuminate what remains dark within me, I work with vivid colors and a decisive presence of light. My optimism arises from my faith in the power of the image to reconcile human beings with the world — to transform vision itself into an act of hope.
What role does time play in your paintings?
In my work time functions as an invisible form of movement, a kind of memory that permeates things. I am fascinated by the moment when time feels endless, when it moves across the canvas along with my brushstroke, linking past and future in the present. I often think of it as a “memory of the future,” a recollection of what is yet to come, which inspired the title of my exhibition Promemory.
Urban landscapes, peculiar buildings, and architectural forms are recurring features in your paintings. How did this choice come about?
Urban landscapes fascinate me because they function as a mirror of humanity. Architecture imposes itself on us in an almost dramatic way; it exists, surrounds us, and carries its own history. It profoundly affects how we live, our goals, and our dreams.
In my paintings, however, buildings are not rendered realistically — they are transformed, they converse with elements of nature, and they acquire their own identity, as if replacing human presence through their existence. This “strangeness” expresses my need to see the city not only as a habitat, but as a place of reflection — a site that calls for respect toward our environment.
As my exhibition’s curator, Efi Michalarou, notes, my art is ‘a personal travel guide to the future’ transforming contemporary landscapes into personal paradises where a myth, a kind of visual solace, unfolds before the viewer, forming a deeply personal narrative.
Your roots in Symi seem to have played a significant role in your artistic journey. Could you tell us more about that?
Symi is always present, even when I’m not painting it. It’s the light, the contrasts, the relationship between nature and memory. Since childhood, I’ve been aware of the island’s magical atmosphere — its textures and colors inspired me to create my own imaginary worlds.
It taught me to observe the subtle shifts of light, to respect silence, to see beauty in simplicity and decay, and to appreciate the fragile balances both in nature and time-worn houses. The island continues to inspire my vision of the future.
For whom does one make art?
Art is, above all, a dialogue with one’s own creative self — a need to understand the world, to construct one’s own universe, to reconcile with reality. Yet every artwork, once it comes into being, seeks the gaze of the other — not for validation, but for communication.
Art has an undeniable therapeutic power, regardless of age, talent or skill. I realize this constantly through my teaching experience. It acts as a bridge between the inner and the outer world, between the individual and the collective experience; it enhances personal expression, and therefore inner harmony.
Art puts together movement and thought, aligning purpose with effort. Experimentation, for me, is essential. It offers motivation for reflection, challenges the mind to come up with solutions, and keeps the creative process alive and unpredictable.
The public’s acceptance of one’s work certainly holds significance. Yet it is not the ultimate aim of the artistic pursuit. Still, when such acceptance arises genuinely, it carries a unique weight and meaning.
Interview by Dora Trogadi
Intro photo: Neo Faliro Transformation
TAGS: ARTS
