Vicky Christou

Vicky Christou is a contemporary Canadian painter, whose artwork is part of the current dialogue and interest involving the materiality of paint and the traditional uses of crafted textiles.

Craft and formal painting processes continue to be inspirational sources for Vicky Christou to explore and reference. Christou’s paintings characterize a merging together of formal abstraction with crafted textile properties. This intermixing of historically opposed traditions is encoded with Christou’s personal history and her intuitive painterliness. She symbolically references her ancestry and their utilitarian handiwork practices such as weaving and crochet into the fine art concepts of abstract painting. In her works, what was once considered oppositional processes become a simultaneously infused object, offering the viewer different considerations of perceived beauty.

Christou uses the platform of the grid as both a point of departure and one of absolute formal purity. Known for her impasto layered grid work, she meticulously layers line upon line of extruded impasto acrylic paint to construct the tactile bias relief sculptural textured surfaces of her paintings. The concept of the grid though often strictly adhered to, does allow for variations by use of bold or subtle color patterns and rhythmical proportions of lines. These multiple framework variables occur, and different visual directions are encouraged as the painting process develops.

The painting’s materiality takes on a sense of a performed three-dimensional calendar as its surfaces are painted over and over again and built up over weeks months and years, becoming a record of time.  The constructed physicality and material nature of the work can also become surprisingly directional.  As when viewed from different vantage points the viewer often sees an unexpected movement of color tonality and shades.

The formal layout of grid is also explored playfully by using more spontaneous brush mark making and open grid systems, these mixed media work on paper are often explorations of balance and light. Beginning with a simple format but evolving into intuitive suggestions of color over a non-gravitational ground, a contrasting counterpoint to the weight of her impasto paintings.

Vicky Christou’s oil pastel works on paper suggest veils color as well as chaotic grid systems that often look architectural in their appearance.  The paintings often appear as cloaking veils, shields and protective netted forming barriers to an interior space.

Born in Melbourne Australia, Christou immigrated to Canada in 1969 and is a graduate of the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. She is mid-career artist living and working in Vancouver B.C and shows across Canada.