DARK ARTS: The Victorian Paintings Of Amalia Kouvalis

Elysium

~by Marie Robinson

There’s something so beautiful and eerie about Victorian photography. The somber faces, the dark, but elegant dress; you could swear that each mysterious portrait subject had a dark and terrible secret hiding behind their blank stare. And then there’s the undeniable morbid—yet fascination—post-mortem photographs, that is, pictures of people after they have died.

American artist Amalia Kouvalis captures the world we want to see when we look at old Victorian portraits. In the flash of an imaginary camera she captures ghosts, demons, departing souls, and other things that we can only catch a glimpse of out of the corner of our eye.

It is no surprise, then, looking at her world, that she is inspired by “Victorian aesthetics” and silent films, as well as dreams and memories. As a movie-lover and a theatre worker, I have a special appreciate for the fact that she spent her childhood in her father’s movie theatre, and that she now strives to embody the atmosphere of it in her paintings.

Her oil paintings and etchings are like a nightmare you want to revisit over and over again, only if to try and understand it more, or a scene from an old black and white movie that you see before the whole theatre goes black and you realize you aren’t alone.

To view more of her artwork and perhaps make a purchase, please visit her website, here .

Here, There

In Limbo

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