Growing up in Newcastle under Lyme, provided Panayi with her love of drawing. She loved nothing other than to visit her local art shop where she would be inspired to draw and design her own pieces. This ranged from her Cinderella's ball gowns to sketching away at cats with felt tips or pencil on paper and this enabled her to delve into what would be her future career as an artist. Influenced by t
Growing up in Newcastle under Lyme, provided Panayi with her love of drawing. She loved nothing other than to visit her local art shop where she would be inspired to draw and design her own pieces. This ranged from her Cinderella's ball gowns to sketching away at cats with felt tips or pencil on paper and this enabled her to delve into what would be her future career as an artist.
Influenced by the works of Beryle Cook and LS Lowry, Panayi continued to create her own works and with the unfortunate death of her mother the artist decided to escape to Cyprus to become a freelance artist. This saw the artist create many different aspects of her work, ranging from portraits to larger scale murals and Panayi adored the family oriented life, carefully watching people simply enjoying the life that Cyprus had to offer.
On returning to the UK in 2002, the artist wanted to push her career in a further direction and studied at Staffordshire University embarking on a 3D design craft degree. This was to become the biggest influence in her creating and saw her 3D work come to life with her sculptural works. Pursuing her passion further, Panayi successfully received a business grant in 2008 where she would be able to set up her own business creating the works she loved so much on a full time scale.
The materials the artist favour are fine metals and in particular silver-smithing which saw two awards from Goldsmiths for her designs using traditional techniques in making the artists silverware. Her works took a new turn and soon 'New Shoes', an innovative and quirky sculpture designed by Panayi won an award from the Global Women's Innovators and Inventors Network, as well as having her very first magazine and newspaper articles.
The inspiration behind the artist creations are very simply people. Characters and capturing gestures, poses and personalities are all themes in the artist's collection with the connotations of relationships and emotions never far from the viewer's eye of her works. Working in several mediums such as pencil, clay, paint, plastics, wood allows Panayi the freedom to express her creativity and she regularly varies the material she uses. When creating a sculpture getting stuck straight in is how the process of her work evolves. The artist is then able to hand finish her sculptures with paints and jewels which is a lengthily process but the end result is well worth the wait.
show less