Angela Dionysopoulos is investigating the thread. Golden thread is the prevalent image and a key medium in her latest series of paintings.

While gold and red have been the predominant colours in her art for many years, more recently she has been utilising gold (which Dionysopoulos says is associated with spirituality and purity) in a range of media: acrylics, oil-based paints, pen and, now, actual thread.

This has not been a conscious decision on her part; that is not the way she works.

“I just go into the studio. I don’t research first. I paint and then look into what’s come up, the symbols.”

The series of paintings Dionysopoulos is working on consists of large pieces, with female figures at the core of each, and smaller abstract ones.

“For many years,” she explains, “my work was about the feminine psyche and its suppression in our universe, within our societies and its distortions within women and men. I believe that men and women each have masculine and feminine sides.

“Today, my work is about bringing balance back by forming an understanding that everything has an opposite, and every opposite complements the other equally.”

One painting depicts a female figure with her arms outstretched to the side and legs astride, conveying a strength derived from self-assurance, and a sense of balance.

Another painting presents two women cosying up to each other, like friends or sisters, expressing Dionysopoulos’s belief that “our society can only find balance if each of us finds balance within ourselves, between our inner and outer feelings, our ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ selves.”

“We are one thread within, masculine and feminine bound, like a sacred marriage. When this occurs the masculine and feminine are harmoniously balanced. By this stage, our thoughts are woven into consciousness.”

In one painting, a female figure has her head thrown back, raising toward the sky, a handful of golden thread, exalting in the fact that she has gathered all the threads. If one looks closely, one can see that the figure has a foetus growing in her, “giving birth”, Dionysopouolos points out, “to a new consciousness”.

The “thread”, the idea of “connecting” is at the core of this artist’s vision.