Artist Statement

Hi! My name is Kika, and I am a Contemporary Patternist from London.

I create art by letting patterns flow naturally — starting with a simple shape, colour, or feeling, and allowing it to grow into unexpected compositions. My work includes colourful paper collages, paintings, prints and textiles that explore form while expressing inner emotions.

Growing up in a Greek Cypriot family, I learned from my grandmother, a refugee, that art can be a sanctuary during difficult times. When I lost my father in 2017, art became my way to process grief and rediscover joy.

Through each piece, I transform complex emotions into vibrant patterns that reflect both the rhythms of nature and the landscapes of the inner world. My work is a reminder of connection — between sorrow and joy, between self and others, between the visible and the invisible.

For a deeper look into my philosophy, process, and approach, read my manifesto below.

A Manifesto for Contemporary Patternism

I. Who I Am

I’m Kika — a contemporary British Greek Cypriot artist based in London.

I make patterns not because I choose to, but because they arise naturally, instinctively, from how I sense the world.

Pattern is my mother tongue: the language I speak before words, the form I inhabit before thought.

It comes from both the visible and the invisible — from rhythms I notice on walks, the repetitions in nature, from memory, grief, and joy inside me.

Pattern didn’t become my language because I willed it. It became my language because it chose me.

II. Pattern Is My Language — Not Decoration

Pattern is often dismissed as decorative, comforting, or easy.

But for me, pattern is older than me. It is ancient. It transcends borders, cultures, generations. It is intuition made visible. It is emotional architecture.

After losing my father in 2017, colour returned through instinct, not intention. I picked up a child’s paint pack — bright colours that reflected how I perceived the world in grief. Scissors followed. Shapes that made no logical sense became honest expressions. Offcuts from collages evolved into a language of their own.

Even when my compositions emerge spontaneously, the translation into textile panels, prints, and finished pieces is intentional. Clarity emerges from intuition.

Pattern didn’t choose me, but I speak through it.

III. Creation as Surrender

My process begins with letting go — again and again.

I start without knowing where I’m going. Colours are chosen impulsively, gut over logic. Scissors guide the shape; a triangle may stay a triangle or become something unfamiliar. Collage is the seed; digital redrawings scale the gestures into silk, where movement, flow, and breath can live.

Grounding practices — walking, meditative presence, observing rhythm in life — feed this flow. This is how I return home to myself.

IV. Healing Through Pattern

Art has never been a hobby or a career. It has been a way of life, a psychological anchor.

After losing my father, something essential went quiet. Photography helped, but it did not replace making with my hands. Anxiety rose. Grief muffled joy. My inner voice felt distant. Returning to making — without structure, critique, or expectation — I found flow, synchronicity, and healing.

Repetition became therapy: shaping, cutting, layering. Internal experience became tangible. My art still heals me — but it is no longer just for me. It is for anyone seeking to reconnect with themselves.

V. Reconnection with Self and Others

Life is fragmented, fast, distracted, disconnected.

Pattern reminds us of connection: the ripples and echoes of branches in water, the symmetries in leaves.

My work is shaped by lineage and survival: my Greek Cypriot grandmother, a refugee, whose resilience and ability to create beauty from hardship hums in my hands. Her history, and my own experiences of loss, are woven into the shapes, colours, and rhythms I make.

Through pattern, I hope people reconnect — with themselves, with each other, with the currents that carry us through grief and joy.

Pattern is not just mine. It is ours. It is mother tongue. It transcends borders. It speaks across time.

VI. What I Stand For

I stand for a creative practice where business and art work together, not against each other.

I stand for intuition, for the choices guided by instinct and feeling as much as by logic or systems of production.

I stand for connection — between people, between art forms, between generations and cultures.

I stand for dismantling the divide between fine art and applied art, high and low.

I stand for making art that heals, inspires, and reconnects.

VII. My Vision Forward

My practice is open — not only to viewers, but to participants.

I invite people to step inside the process: workshops, open studios, shared making. Creation does not have to be solitary; it can be communal, a conversation, a gathering.

I want pattern to be accessible. Not elitist, not gatekept. No gallery pass required. No degree. Just curiosity, presence, openness.

I lean into chance, into forms that resist explanation.  I trust the scissors that follow the cuts that follow the shapes. They reveal something if we allow them.

I am not decorating the world. I am weaving connection — thread by thread.