Soula Mantalvanos
Artist, designer and gallerist. Advocate for the better quality of care, founder of My Health Story.
Soula Mantalvanos combines design and art with her Byzantine heritage, using paintings and etchings to convey personal life stories.
Beginning her professional career as creative director of her design company, ooi.com.au, Soula has also had the opportunity to exhibit paintings and prints at various galleries; currently at The Convent Daylesford and Queenscliff Gallery, and previously at Port Jackson Press, Gasworks Arts Park and Brunswick Street Gallery.
For Soula, artistic practice serves as a means of self-expression, while design offers a disciplined avenue for creative exploration. Employing both disciplines and keen observation, Soula explores a topic that has always fascinated her: identity—whether it manifests in architecture, human subjects, or objects.
Soula consistently engages with the theme of identity, with her figures characterised by empathy rather than egocentrism, striking a balance between sincerity and confidence. In her work, a seated model or marionette often sets Soula around historical architecture and significant objects from her life, such as olive leaves, suitcases, and her patron saint, St. George. She also incorporates foliage and keys as a tribute to Fornasetti.
In Soula’s most recent exhibition, Passaggi: A Painted Season, the artist traced a personal journey through Central and Northern Italian towns and laneways—places rich with stone, shadow, light, and daily life. Sketched in situ and completed in her Queenscliff studio, the oil paintings reflected the quiet act of walking, observing, and returning.
‘Each painting captures not only what I saw, but what lingered—light falling on stone, the echo of footsteps, a remembered melody, and the simple pleasure of being there.’
In 2015, a sea change from Melbourne led Soula to Co-Direct Queenscliff Gallery (QG) with her husband, Theo, on the Bellarine Peninsula, where she applied her fine art and design experience to curate and manage QG’s brand and identity.
