Andrea Theocles
Artist’s bio
Born in Massachusetts, Andrea’s remembrances were of her love of nature. She has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge regarding plants and animals and a fertile imagination that was fueled by walks through nature… from low country to 14,000-foot peaks. Her Greek heritage goes back to the islands of Lesvos, Cyprus, and Crete. These islands provide a background of music, art, dance, and culinary arts and reflect an intense passion of the Greek lifestyle. Hundreds of years of art and music in the blood yield a bounty of creativity that longs to be expressed.
A horseback riding excursion on the Navajo Reservation in Monument, Utah, provided Andrea’s first major experience with the Native American world. She visited a plethora of ruins, petroglyphs, pictographs, arches and mesas where ancient ceremonies took place and felt a powerful energy coming from the surrounding areas. A visit to the Monument Valley Dental Clinic later that day showed Andrea a way of returning thanks to the Navajo for what she experienced. She spent one week a month for the next year working in the clinic on the reservation as a dental hygienist. Many cultures exchanges with the Elders and their families provided Andrea with many valuable lessons.
She took extended trips to the Amazon jungle of Peru and the high altitudes of Cuzco, Peru to seek out alternative medical therapies for health issues that did not respond to western medicine. These were incredible experiences for her and the medical practitioners that accompanied her. Their adventures, interviews and purification ceremonies with the shaman shed new light on their views about health, life and death.
After experiencing their rituals, fasting, medicine and culture, she began to connect the spirituality that she expresses in her art. Andrea invites the observer to travel into her world of color, texture and emotion to share subtle universal messages that have potential to stimulate the imagination to go one step beyond to a higher plane of feeling.
Andrea’s interests include stained glass, silver clay jewelry, watercolor and acrylic painting, sterling silver and semi-precious stone jewelry and leather sculpture. Her fiber art demonstrates the different ways that wool, silk and other natural fibers can be manipulated to create works of art. She sources her fibers from around the world to support artisans from other countries.
Artist’s statement
I have been creating some form of art since the day I could walk. Nature has been most inspiring for me, I love to immerse myself in it. Camping, hiking, photography walks, being by the ocean, sunrises, and moonlit starry nights trigger my imagination and passion for creating. I work in many mediums, and depending on the day and my mood they are all favorites. Fiber, silver and semi-precious stones, mixed media, and watercolor are some of them.
