Margaret Frances Paraskos (born 1959) is an English-born artist of Cypriot descent and a resident in Cyprus. She is the daughter of the Cypriot artist

Stass Paraskos Stass Paraskos (; 17 March 1933 – 4 March 2014) was a British-Cypriot painter, sculptor, and writer. Born and raised in Cyprus, he spent much of his life working and teaching in England, where he famously became embroiled in a 1966 obscenity ...

and succeeded him as the director of the

Cyprus College of Art The Cyprus College of Art (CyCA) is an artists' studio group, located in the village of Lempa on the west coast of Cyprus. It was founded in 1969 by the artist Stass Paraskos; the current director is the Cyprus-based artist Margaret Paraskos. H ...

Biography

Margaret Paraskos was born in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, daughter of the Cypriot artist

. She attended Chartham County Secondary Modern School in

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, England, and went on to study Fine Art at the

University of Brighton The University of Brighton is a public university based in Brighton on the south coast of England. Its roots can be traced back to 1858 when the Brighton School of Art was opened in the Royal Pavilion. It achieved university status in 1992. T ...

. She later studied for a master's degree in Fine Art at the

University of Northampton The University of Northampton is a public university based in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England. It was formed in 1999 by the amalgamation of a number of training colleges, and gained full university status as the University of Northampto ...

. She has been employed in teaching art at a number of institutions, mainly in Cyprus, and has run the Lempa campus of the Cyprus College of Art since 1985. With the death of Stass Paraskos in 2014 she became the director of the Cyprus College of Art. As well as having work in collections in Cyprus, she is included in the painting collection of the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

in England.

Artistic style

Margaret Paraskos is predominantly a painter. According to the Greek newspaper

Kathimerini ( Greek: Η Καθημερινή, ; ) is a daily, political and financial morning newspaper published in Piraeus, Athens. Its first edition was printed on 15 September 1919. is considered a newspaper of record and the leading right-wing newspape ...

her work is 'inspired by philosophy, mythology, the poetry of Homer and Ovid and the bucolic life'. These elements lead to brightly coloured painted canvases that are 'characterised by free flowing gestures.' Her works have been exhibited in Cyprus, Britain and other countries. This includes the exhibition 'Travellers to an Antique Land', held in

Paphos Paphos, also spelled as Pafos, is a coastal city in southwest Cyprus and the capital of Paphos District. In classical antiquity, two locations were called Paphos: #Old Paphos, Old Paphos, today known as Kouklia, and #New Paphos, New Paphos. It i ...

in Cyprus in March 2015, which took its theme from the poem by

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was an English writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame durin ...

, ''Ozymandias''. In an interview on the exhibition Paraskos said, 'The poem, and thus the exhibition, share the idea of the mystery of visiting an ancient culture for the first time.' This poetic approach to painting was noted by Dr. Nadia Anaxagorou, writing on Margaret Paraskos's work in 2012, who stated: 'In a painterly universe, where the rules of order, proportion and gravity are eliminated... one figure emerges from each other in passages where reality and logic meet dreams and the imagination'. A strong desire to use art to convey emotions through the use of colour and shape is also evident in Paraskos's claim that, 'Through rich colors, abstract shapes and personal symbols' she is seeking to express 'strong emotions' with her work.'Η Μάρκαρετ Παράσκου εκθέτει στη Κυπριακή Γωνιά' in ''Η Καθημερινη'' (Greece newspaper), 29 March 2012
Online version
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References

External links

Cargo Collective website

Interview with Margaret Paraskos on German television station ARTE, 17 April 2016
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paraskos, Margaret 1959 births Living people Cypriot women painters Alumni of the University of Brighton Alumni of the University of Northampton Greek Cypriots Modern painters Cypriot women academics