tom powell

Tom was born in France in 1987. After five magical years wandering the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, in

2008 he found a haven in the calm waters of Hydra where he now lives and works permanently, returning in fact to his roots and his family’s artistic tradition, since both his artist grandparents Tony and Simonetta Powell stayed in Hydra, Spetses and Porto Heli during the 70s and 80s, and at that time his parents also lived on Hydra.

A graduate of the prestigious French school Les Compagnons du Devoir et du Tour de France where he specialised in woodwork, the young Powell had every opportunity, after establishing himself on Hydra, to devote himself to painting.

Leaving aside the pervasive internationalism of today’s artistic scene in his work,

he concentrates on Greece, a country with a rich artistic tradition where the young artist made a conscious decision to settle and make a career for himself as a painter, portraying moments and scenes from Greek life, Greek landscape and nature.

As a whole his work is inspired mainly by his beloved ‘second fatherland’, Hydra...

The powerful, and simultaneously magic landscape of the island, the unique architecture, the pure, dazzling light, are elements which very early on awoke his talent and constitute, as he himself confesses, an inexhaustible source of inspiration and artistic creativity. His mentors, two significant artists, happen to come from Hydra: our great academy teacher, Panayiotis Tetsis, and the celebrated painter Dimitris Gassoumis. The respect in which the young artist holds these two painters and their influence on his own art, are clear...

Tom Powell’s first love is oil painting but he is experimenting with drawings and works of mixed media, all of which works afford the viewer an opportunity to appreciate the emergence of a new talent.

Landscape, still life, portraits are the fruit of this young artist’s time, memories and love, revealing a sincere and personal visual expression. Without doubt though, his greatest forte is his landscapes with their harmonious, mingled colours and light.

His authentic style, strongly imprinted through his brushwork but also always linked to the beauty of Greek light and its fluctuations, which Tom Powell portrays so brilliantly in most of his landscapes, are characteristics of all his work up till now and are interwoven with his freedom of expression.

The dynamic balance between abstract and figurative, combined with the strong colour sense in his compositions are impressive features which I believe will soon prove him to be one of the great artists of the 21st century.

Dina Adamopoulou

Director of General State Archives,

Historical Archives Museum of Hydra.