Panos Kazantzis
ABOUT ME
As an outsider artist my work is driven by instinct and intuition celebrating rawness and imperfection in shapes, colours and
meaning. I primarily practice painting and drawing using liquid and solid paints and drawing material together with text, collage, embroidery and paper sculpture. My
poetry is an extension of my visual art, adding a lyrical dimension to my expression while
my work in photography, opposingly to the rest, tries to capture the world with fidelity in depiction.
My work, like all art, is a reflection of perception manipulating and conceiving symbols to create a language that emerges from the inherit disorder
of the world. Akin to the constellations of stars that draw arbitrary lines across a chaotic sky. Through this process I delve into exploration and
conception. Identity lies at the core of my work as I strive to discover or liberate it. The transfigured figures in my work, the archetypal symbols and the
allegorical scenes and text I employ, serve as vehicles for approaching consciousness - ironically, the very cause of the loss of identity and the means
by which it can only be attained.
Born in Athens, Greece in 1995 I expressed a passion for the visual arts from a young age. When a child, my love for painting
and nature where interwined with a focus on animal potraits. Growing up, I was intrigued by science following an analytical
academic path. I am now based in London, UK working as a data scientist after graduating from the London School of Economics
and Political Science (LSE) with a master's in mathematics. Having not a formal education in art I have been exploring
and experimenting with multiple techniques and material throughout the years trying to develop my own personal style in form and
in substance. Missing a formal education in art is a challenge but also liberating as it is a very sincere form of artistic expression. Influences of my
background in science and my passion for nature and mythology can be traced in my work which is in its core symbolic.
I find the binary distinction between the creative and the analytical as false, failing to capture the drive behind both, being in both cases
to explore and to experience. I currently work from a dedicated space in my flat in south London trying to kickstart a career as an artist.
