Countryside

Mary Schina was born in 1948 in Serres. She studied printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the tutor K. Grammatopoulos (1966-1971), at the Book Art Workshop of the School of Fine Arts under the tutor G. Papadakis (1971-1973) and then engraving at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris on a scholarship from the French government (1976-1981). She taught plastic arts at the College of Athens (1981-1993) and from 1993 to 2015 she taught printmaking at the A.S.K.T. workshop. From 1996-1997 she attended Advanced Colour Printmaking seminars at New York University in New York as a visiting scholar and in 2004 she attended Advanced Printmaking and Digital Prints seminars at Columbia College Chicago. Her work, mostly paintings and prints, primarily depicts landscapes, which the artist renders realistically, with an emphasis on design elements and clarity of detail. In the 1990s she produced a series of painted copperplate prints inspired by architectural structures. After the 2000s she also moved on to create visual installations, which frame and accentuate her printmaking work. In her more recent works she returns to printmaking and photography. Differentiating from her hitherto perspective towards light and nature, she focuses on the particularities of black and chooses to work through watercolour black and white digital shots, returning to the primary commitments of printmaking, which is the relationship between black and white. She has presented her work in more than thirty solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad and has participated in dozens of group exhibitions and international biennials. Her work has been awarded (2003 - Dr. Iwasaki Award, 4th Kyoto International Woodprint Exhibition, 2009 - Rector of the Szczecin Academy of Applied Arts Award) and is in public and private collections in Greece and abroad.