About the Artist
Irene Kalantzis was born in Athens, Greece. She loved drawing and painting from a very young age. She studied fine arts at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in Greece, focusing on impressionism and the application of color and texture.
After moving to Chicago and while her three children where young, she continued to paint occasionally for friends, churches, and for various fundraisers. Later, she developed a love for murals and worked as a designer consultant and mural artist.
Over the past few years Irene has been drawn to the freedom of abstract art. She started experimenting with the fluidity of colors and the emotions they were bringing out in her. The results of mixing and pouring different pigments on canvas fascinated her!
It seemed that all her journeys were necessary to get her to this point. What was extraordinary for her was that as she explored more, she found herself in a whole new world of vivid, free-flowing colors blending with each other, evoking an emotional expression and response. Sometimes it was joy and excitement, other times peace and calmness.
She also welcomed the challenge of using the fluidity of paint, deciding when to let go and when to control, to create something more defined – scenes of nature, landscapes, and seascapes – all of which she loves. Her paintings are still but never static.
She hopes the viewer will be drawn in her compositions and walk in the environment she creates, bringing one’s own interpretation, allowing the colors to convey emotion, eliciting a variety of responses. For this reason, Irene chooses not to name her abstract paintings. She wants the viewer to see, think and feel the world she creates through their own eyes and awaken their own emotions.
She credits God for her talent.