Interview with Artist Matina Vossou

Matina Vossou's paintings, appearing on the cover and in our Fall 2025 issue, offer a striking and colorful representation of their subjects. The stained-glass-like texture stops the onlooker in their tracks and invites them in closer, asking them to take their time in their examination and consider the complexity of the subject. Find more of Matina's work we published here and get to know the artist in the interview below.

What makes you keep creating, even when it's hard?

The truth is that I took a very long hiatus from painting. Life happened, meaning my studies and then my job obligations didn’t leave me any free time to get down to painting. However, during this long period, I didn’t quit my writing. I kept in my drawer some poetry collections in Greek, and I also managed to publish one of my plays (The Nothing Of People), a dystopian comedy, which is still looking for a stage and a director.

Then, suddenly, back in 2014, I saw a dream with my late father that got me back to the painting track. My father was a naïve painter and he taught me how to use mainly toothpicks when painting. The dream, as all dreams are, was a bit weird. I was on a sunny beach. There, out of the blue, my aunt appeared (my father’s sister who also paints amazingly) and also my dad who urged me to follow him inside a store. There, he presented me two black and white portraits in a kind of demanding way. The dream was so vivid and seemed like my subconscious was yelling at me. The next thing I did was ask a colleague to pose for me exactly as the portrait I had witnessed in my dream. This portrait is on the cover of my published play. It isn’t in black and white but very close to my dream memory.

I think there is something like a creative force inside us. It manifests in various ways. It can be suppressed but like a water gusher, it cannot be held down. It never gets dry. It stays with us until our last breath.

Advice on creating that you’ve learned by trial and error.

Trial and error is an inevitable necessity in our lives. It is a tool for survival: changing, adjusting, and breathing, that’s all we constantly do.

I strongly believe that painting is mostly a matter of our personal perception of the world. Different styles and techniques are only the garments that hide the bare body of our perception. Trial and error in the creating process is the agony we go through to depict exactly the reflection of the outer world on the mirror surface of our heart and mind. 

What's your favorite underappreciated novel or short story (a work you never hear anyone else talking about)?

The Golden Ass of Apuleius.

If you were a cryptid, what would your name be and where would you dwell?

I am fascinated by the mythological creatures, especially those of Greek Mythology. I would choose to be Amphisbaena, the reptile with a head on each end. Its name means that it could move in both ways. I would dwell anywhere I could crawl along. For me this creature is a fine symbol of dialectic; two heads, two minds, two directions: a proposition (thesis) and a counter-proposition (antithesis). The result is synthesis, a combination of these two obvious opposite arguments and that is the procedure of pure creation.  

One sentence soapbox:

We only have each other.

What is your creative strategy? Do you make art every day with a rigid schedule, or are you more flexible with your practice?

At present, I wake up every day before dawn and I paint until midday. My mind is lucid early in the morning and it is so quiet. This is something that I really enjoy. I have had this routine for a year and a half. That’s when I lost my regular job. I had been working for many years for a large publishing house, which went into bankruptcy. During my working years there, I used to paint late at night and with no consistency; exhaustion and anxiety are creation killers. But I kept going and I am glad I didn’t give up.

How is your closet organized? 

All my closets are full of stuff; there is total anarchy all around. However, my paint tubes are a bit organized. 

What do you hope viewers gain from your work? 

I hope to communicate deeply with my viewers. I would like them, for a moment, to try, feel, and look through my eyes: fractured faces, realities, emotions that exist as a whole. But most important, I would like them to ponder and communicate with their inner selves through the expressions and the symbols that I am painting and the stories I am telling.

What’s the one problem with the human condition you wish could be fixed? 

Greed, egoism, apathy, obsession with control, illusion of superiority, capitalism; lots of hues on the human condition palette.

Why are manholes round? 

Probably to enhance the agony of claustrophobia (like a CT scanner).

What is your favorite museum or gallery? 

I would definitely say the Louvre. I visited it many years ago and I do hope that I will come back and visit it again someday. I was in total awe. I spent around 5-6 hours almost running from one exhibition room to another and I only managed to see just a tiny fraction of its treasures. I also fell in love with a portrait there by Delacroix. I kept staring at it, mesmerized. The man in the portrait was another painter, a friend of the artist. 

Most triumphant thing you did as a child?

I never learned how to swim, I fell off a four-wheel bicycle, and I was rejected from a choir for not having an appropriate singing voice. I know, it is tough to be a child prodigy, but that’s the way it is.

Matina Vossou is a self-taught artist living in Athens, Greece. She uses acrylics and a toothpick, a technique she learnt from her father, a naïve painter. She paints faces like perfectly unfinished mosaics of emotions and ideas. The skin is cracked and seemingly illuminated from the inside. She believes that every face is a journey; looking at a face is one of the longest, most adventurous and knowledgeable trips one can have. You can view more of her work at http://www.linktr.ee/matinavossou