With such an epithet, fate would almost certainly send her to Greece, although the artist Mary Gladstone, now synonymous with Philhellenic British politician William Gladstone, was born in Kent, where she spent her childhood years. Later, she married a Greek woman and they did not intend to live in our country, but her father-in-law’s health problems forced the couple to move. It was in the mid-1970s when, among all other Greek beauties, he first discovered Hydra, the island where he was lucky enough to live permanently in 1990. This was the time he started teaching watercolor. Meanwhile, he taught fine arts at St. Catherine’s British School in Athens.

Although the Hydra has been drawn and photographed many times, Maria has found a unique way to celebrate it artistically through weaving, knitting and embroidery, which she currently exhibits at the Historical Archive – Hydra Museum (IAMY). These are 40 tender works that catch the eye and remind us of those ancient times when patience and determination were the qualities of an artist-craftsman. Her technique is unique because very often in one composition she combines sections with all three techniques. “The truth is, I didn’t intend to dedicate myself to yarn. But at some point, when I was painting with paints, I started having terrible headaches from turpentine. So I made the decision to do something else and gradually moved on to knitting and then to a small loom,” she says in the column.

Indeed, her work is very interesting because of how she manages to combine different parts, giving different textures to the surface of the work. “Mairi mixes colors, alternating and perfectly matching dark browns with greys, ochers, yellows, oranges, blues, garnets, reds, creating with her own stamp a universally captivating visual language on knitted or woven bases with special tints, colors and shapes” , says Dina Adamopoulou, head of IAMY at Hydra, which has been holding great exhibitions and giving gifts for many years.

The touching thing about Gladstone is that, thanks to the medium she chose to express herself, we have the opportunity to see the settlement and nature of Hydra in the way a loom or an embroiderer would portray her with stoicism, and not with a lens flick or hasty strokes. In addition, as she notes, these 40 projects took about 12 years of tireless work. The exhibition will officially open this Saturday.