Art part of healing for Kamsack woman – Yorkton This Week

Art came to Anna Maria Markopoulou later in life and now she is exploring just where the muse might take her work.
Originally from Athens, Greece, Markopoulou would move to Canada in 2008.
“I was coming from Greece in 2008 and I was going towards Vancouver,” she said, but life took her on a detour, a detour that included having to deal with breast cancer, and one that found her finally settling in Kamsack.
The detour also led to Markopoulou finding her artistic side.
“When I was sick and not able to work I started making arts and crafts in order to spend my time without thinking of cancer,” she said, adding it was actually following something of a family trait. “My grandfather was an artist and my father also. It runs in the family.”
Along the way Markopoulou made an interesting choice in terms of a ‘canvas’ for her paintings. She began using reclaimed barn wood.
“I like to work with wood,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s new or old, but I prefer the old, because I give a second chance to the wood, which people throw away.”
Not surprisingly Markopoulou was largely cathartic in nature.
“When I was sick and my psychology was very low, I started making angels and churches in order to lift up my spirit,” she said.
As Markopoulou recovered the scope of her art expanded, to the point her work is now for sale, a decision that did not come easily in the beginning.
“In the beginning I didn’t want to sell anything,” she said. “It was just for me.
“But in the summer of 2018, I put it out in the front yard of my house for other people just for enjoyment.
“But people asked me if I sell any of my work, and I start thinking about it.
“Since they appreciate it, I start selling at a symbolic price.
“Whatever I do about my work of art and craft is not to make money, it’s to give pleasure.”
And there are times Markopoulou in a sense pays her art forward too.
“Sometimes I like to donate things that I create to people that went through the same illness,” she said.
A recurring theme in Markopoulou’s work at present is the feather.
“In the world of art,whatever the artist feels,the artist creates,” she said when asked about the significance of the feather. “Since I’m living in a native area I was influenced by this category of art.
“But also in Europe they have this kind of feather art, with various colours; like Natives and Gypsies; Boho.
“I put bright colours in my art because it gives me energy – positive thinking.”
As for inspiration Markopoulou takes it from wherever it happens to poke its head.
“Sometimes they come into my mind, other times as I’m walking I might see something, or online and I put more into the theme or subject,” she said.
“The colours of feathers I prefer to be a bright and happy and not depressed. We have a lot of depressing things and problems in our lives.”
While many of Markopoulou’s current works are of feathers, they are not necessarily her preferred subject matter.
“I like to paint farms, but most of all I like to paint boats, and sea, lighthouses and harbours,” she said. “But I do anything that brings me a good feeling inside me, because whatever I feel it has to come out at the time I create.”

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