CURRICULUM VITAE Thomai Kontou learned sketching from 1971 to 1978 in Athens, in the Vrassida Vlahopoulos and Theodoros Drossos ateliers. She was taught painting by Yannis Tsarouhis, while she learned the Fresco Technique by Dimitris Kostopoulos. She is continuously present in the Artistic area since 1973 with 22 individual exhibitions and has taken part in 426 group shows in Greece and abroad. She participated in 16 BIENNALES: 1996 in Belgrade, 1998 in Mexico, 1999 and 2001 in Pisa Italy and in 2002, 2004 in Poland and 2005 in Serbia. and Ankara Turkey. 2006 in Victoria- Canada, etc. Her works are influenced by the Aegean Sea, its stones and shells, by the Universal flows and the Angels Plasmas. Works of her can be found in private collections in Greece, Cyprus, Germany, USA, Italy, Japan, Spain, Brazil. They can also be found in the Navys collection in the Averoff warship and in the following Museums: Transparent Museum of Art in Belgrade and the Post Denmark Museum of Art in Copenhagen. Also in Sgourdas Collection Contemporary artistic èventail . The Greek Navy has dedicated to her the 53d special edition of Navy Intellectual Culture , while she has been included in the artistic sector of the Navy Encyclopedia , in the Painters meeting folio, and the Greek Artists Lexicon edited by Melissa . Under the Auspices of the Organization Cultural Capitol of Europe Thessaloniki 97 , her folio Aegean Shells was edited in June 1997. It contained 10 cards from her paintings. In 1998 she sketched the scenery and costumes for the play Our own yard by Vangelis Colonas, which was performed in Larissa in cooperation with the Theater of Thessaly . She is organized and she is the curator of the << 1st international mail art exhibition in Greece>> in Elassona and Athens
The angels of Thomais
Young men, twenty years of age, students or unemployed in the 80s. They go nightcrawling on streets of sin, entering bars, drinking beer shots, moving to a fuzzy jazz or rock groove. And yet for all the clamor of indulgence and the colours of the night, the angel children keep their eyes and love intact. They seem ready to escape any danger that challenges their soul rather than their bodies. Male angels of whom a few are lost in their gender know however that they are loved in the hands of the painter and they settle down in her colours. They admire their wings, showing them and showing themselves off through them. Their colours in perfect harmony and their size immense behind the frame. The painting holds little of the totality outside it; they fly freely, the clatter of their wings is easy to hear. The painter would have been erroneous to incarcerate the angels. Daylight does not conform to their disposition. The resplendent Greek day makes them uneasy because they are different from the image of their small town. But the painter has given them enough courage to confront it. Their long hair is reminiscent that of Botticelis Venus. Sometimes it caresses noble hands, others it strikes like beams against whoever might lay blame on them. The faces of all reflect honesty and virtue. Their brown and yellow-tinted colours transmit the light of a Greek springtime noon. Exposed to the eyes of strangers, they blush to morally sophisticated looks. They appear to be hunted, afraid that they might lose the remaining honesty. More than anything they count on this for the welfare of their tranquility. They storm out into the night, to lose themselves into the smoky, sinful air of the lightless bar. The light of the hair, a halo with a mission in our era unlike that of the saints. A gift in the face of the love angel who was purified in the night, when the day drove him away. Look closer and their eyes are lit in the pitch-black of the night, standing solemnly in the love of the painter, aware of their faults and virtues, against the shameless day. Safe in the darkness and perilous in the daylight, they live in fear lest the loveless that revile the night see them and offend their loves. The colours make them so vibrant that they could confess without asking them those they love and those they do not. They never give you the right to think that they hate somebody. The diverse light that you see is from a closed space, the painters nice old room at all times of the day, a solitary property of hers alone, with windows wide open in the day and strictly shut in the night. She had it set out like this in order to accommodate the angels during the day until eleven before midnight. Then, they all take to the streets for love.
Vassilis Siouzoulis
