Culture & the Arts

Having relocated to Hydra in 2007, Alexis recent painting works to capture the specific luster of the island’s colors, moods, and natural environment.

Award-winning author Alison Leslie Gold has published fiction, nonfiction, and journalism, as well as written for radio and television. She presently divides her time between New York City and Kamini, Hydra.

Poet Ann Rivers has lived on Hydra for nearly four decades. She has published several volumes of poetry.

English painter Bill Pownall has been living and working on Hydra for decades, transforming its scenery into a symbolic language in his abstract paintings and creating evocative landscape collages.

PainterAmerican painter Brice Marden and his wife, Helen Harrington, first visited Hydra in 1971. Since, they have returned annually, and the island is said to have greatly affected Marden’s work.

David Fagan spent his formative years in Africa. After lunch on a Greek island day trip in 1983, he opted not to reboard the cruise boat but stayed, living and working on Hydra, pursuing his alternative lifestyle, publishing his first collection of stories about the island in 2003.

David has been living on the Greek island of Hydra for over twenty years, during which time he has developed a keen interest in making items of art from the native olive wood.

Born of an Hydriot mother, Demetris Gassoumis splits his time between the island and the States. Hydra landscapes make up the vast majority of his painting, and he also makes stunning shadow sculptures out of white paper.

Don Lowe has spent the last four decades on the island and has penned multiple works of fiction. He often entertains the locals with readings from his writings.

Descended from an old Hydriot family, the self-taught Iris Kharami has been painting for thirty years. She has had seven one-woman shows in Athens and two on Hydra, and her work captures island’s “grandeur and austerity.”

Jacqui came to live in Greece nearly 25 years ago. After living in Athens for two years she moved to Hydra, which has been her home and source of inspiration ever since.

Michael Lawrence has lived and worked on Hydra since 1992, painting landscapes and portraits, as well as whimsical interpretations of idea and experience, some inspired by the island itself.

French watercolorist Natacha Best divides her time between Paris and Hydra, taking the landscape as the inspiration for most of her paintings. She has exhibited for more than twenty years throughout France, Spain, and Greece.

One of Greece’s most eminent painters, Hydra-born Panayiotis Tetsis takes the island as inspiration for many of his land- and seascapes and still lifes.

Pauline Keaney lives permanently on Hydra, whose landscape and scenery are sources of inspiration for her abstract paintings.

English writer and poet Roger Green lives and works full-time in Kamini, regaling the locals with his parodic verse.