Nicholas Panayi was born in 1961 in Cyprus, where he works.

His approach is to reach the most inner of the artist expressions, strong as the statements of the 20th Century artists who have used any means to express something that would hook the audience to the image, as if it were a passage to a more intimate look, as if it were a cut, a hole in the canvas, to represent the unapologetic attitude to destroy and deconstruct past forms of art. It also is, to him, the expression of body and soul, together in a unique form.

His bodies, which have been his main point of interest until now, come from darkness, from a nothingness that is the multitude of all the human beings, that is our everyday life. The naked bodies that emerge, are the solid form of a symbol: strength but also vulnerability of the flesh, personal life and universal mythology, dream and reality.

When we look at Panayi's work we look at a work coming from years of training and reflection. His studies in Prague have formed is trade as a truly European way of understanding art. The avant-guards opened the way to a freedom unknown to past artists, freedom of form and expression. The transformation of the idea of communication into expression is the trademark of a culture that has substituted personality to world view, to a communication meant to reach everyone. The secret world that Panayi expresses is both open and closed to the audience.

Sure, much of its allure comes from an immediate revelation of a unique world, but at the same time, it takes a trained eye, a special and refined sensibility to truly see what's behind it. "It's a secret" are the ultimate words that his bodies might mutter to us, as if speaking to our ears, whispering.

We could summarize his art in saying that the translucency and fragility of the canvas coupled with the human skill of handling it, represent centuries of knowledge and practice that formed of culture.