Yanis Zagorianakos

YZAGOR  Yanis Zagorianakos

Yanis Zagorianakos is a self-taught full time craftsman and painter for the last 25 years. He has a BSC in Industrial Chemistry and Design from The City University London, making him an artist with a highly developed scientific interest and an inquisitive approach. 

Born in Athens, he grew up between Athens, Johannesburg and London. He moved permanently to London at the age of 17, where he first studied and then worked as a Project Scientist & Designer carrying out research. After 15 years he moved back to Athens, gave up working as a scientist and started traveling to India, where by chance he got introduced to Arts & Crafts. For the next 10 years he regularly visited India and took seminars in various crafts and numerous workshops in painting in London and Athens while working as a full time artist/craftsman for the last 25 years. He now lives between the islands of Aegina & Amorgos where he works.

Yanis and Marina Coriolano Lykourezou jointly have created and run,

Aegina Retreats www.aeginaretreats.com,

Vedic Art Greece www.vedicartgreece.com,

The Cool Projects www.thecoolprojects.com,

The Grapevine House www.throughthegrapevinehouse.com

Yanis  has also created

His first brand of handcrafts “kuenta” in 1997 and run it until 2012

He  also organized jointly with Marina and ran The Booze Market at Booze Cooperativa in Athens a physical market for crafters and artists to sell their creations to the public and its online version The Crafts Market 2008-20012 while she was also running the Cats & Marbles Gallery in Athens

Find out more at www.yzagor.co.uk or www.aeginaretreats.com

Yanis, in his work but also in life has failed many times for different reasons and that is what he considers his main source of education.

Workshops/Retreats

Yanis also runs two workshops/retreats,

Generally and broadly meant, they are based on 3 pillars, Science, Art & Spirituality. Both deal with the creative process but with slightly different approach, they both offer a road map to flowing creativity, concentrating much more on the journey rather then the destination.

By science we broadly mean the intellect, knowledge, or technique,

by Art, we refer to the imagination, dreams, memory, or even the subconscious and

by Spirituality, we approach the open sea of possibilities, the infinite source of wisdom.

The difference between his 2 workshops is

The Vedic Art course is based on the registered method created by Curt Kallman in Sweden with Maharishi Mahishi Yogi and it concentrates more on spirituality and art and less on science, providing a road map for free raw expression. You can find more at www.vedicartgreece.com

The Creative Flow or Beyond the Intellect as it is now called,created and registered by Yzagor  is inspired amongst other things from  the Kandinsky theory and his books , Point Line & Plane and Concerning the Spiritual in Art and by the book Creativity by Physicist David Bohm. You can find out more at www.aeginaretreats.com

Both courses cover all 3 pillars but in different degrees.

The courses can be booked individually but Yanis also offers them combined together at discounted price upon request, we also offer custom dates upon request as long as it is 7 days or more.

Yanis is also a Certified Vedic Art Teacher.

Who Can Participate?

Both courses are open to all skill levels, beginners or experienced.

These courses will not teach you how to become a painter or an artist in a week.

They both concentrate on creating the space, an empty undefined, safe, space for the creative process to flow with no concern about the outcome, or any prior knowledge.

Both offer alternative methods to approach the creative flow based on different balances between science, art and spirituality.

The aim is to realize that the process is a state of the mind or a way of being or seeing more than it is about any kind of skill*. It is not about any method or specific outcome, it is about the way we connect with our surroundings, the way to be in a creative flow, away from preconceptions and become free to express.

*Skill is very important for anyone wishing to express in a meaningful and complete way and in no way do we mean that it is not important in art or life.

It is just that for now for both of these workshops, skill can wait until the need arises.

In the space,  there is no left or right, no up or down. Can we open our perception to this?

What you need to Participate?

Willing to learn

Willing to maintain an open mind away from whatever we all know

Willing to change and adapt

Willing to receive, accept and share, open to connect

Willing to focus and try

Willing to fail

Willing to keep trying