Simoni Trapsioni received her M.F.A in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2003. She earned her B.F.A. in painting from Aristotle University School of Fine Arts in Thessaloniki, Greece. Originally from Cyprus, Trapsioni taught art education at several public and private schools in Thessaloniki before moving to the United States to attend SCAD. Solo exhibitions of her work were featured at the Opus-93 Art Gallery in Nicosia, Cyprus, the Metopi Art Gallery, Athens, Greece, and Gallery Espresso in Savannah, Ga. She works and lives in Savannah with her husband, Constantino, and their beautiful infant daughter, Agni.rnrn"Through my self-portraits, I record my life’s journey in my images. In this process of self-discovery, I attempt to find new and effective ways of representing my mind’s conjures, my experiences of the past, my perception of the present, my thoughts, my dreams of the future, the perplexities, the influences and mystery of the unknown in my life. Through my use of symbolism, material, color and composition, I try to convey these elements with total disregard of any temporal continuity. rnI frequently paint the female figure, mostly myself, because I happened to be born as a woman and I experience the world though my female body. I sometimes use beeswax because it parallels my human existence. Like my own life, it is so volatile. It embodies many states: solid and permanent when cold, liquid and fluent when hot, light and smoke when burned. Sometimes, I place paintings in paintings as insets, in an attempt to capture the idea that the two images or ideas are at the same time separate and related. Painting provides me with the external means for an internal search. I do not like to provide the viewers with any direction. My paintings attempt to make subtle statements, which I hope will raise questions in the mind of my viewers, not provide any answers. I expect my paintings to awaken within my viewers, messages which are interpreted based on their personal experiences."rn—Simoni Trapsioni