Art has been part of Michalis Kitsis’s life for as long as he can remember. Working under the name HelmetedArt, the Greek Cypriot artist, now based in Linköping, Sweden, creates figurative paintings that move between psychological, theatrical, and mythological worlds.

With a background in painting and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Kitsis has developed a visual language centered around identity, emotion, and the different versions of ourselves that we present to the world. At the heart of his ongoing series Behind the Mirror is a recurring vintage diving helmet, simultaneously a mask and a vessel, representing the ways we protect ourselves and learn to breathe under pressure.

His paintings are rich in colour and atmosphere, but they are never simply about what appears on the surface. Behind each concealed face lies a question about what it means to be human, to adapt, to hide, and ultimately to reveal something of ourselves.

In this conversation with Pice Magazine, Michalis Kitsis talks about discovering art as a child, finding his way to Fine Arts almost by accident, the story behind Behind the Mirror, his fascination with masks and Greek mythology, and why he believes a painting should never belong entirely to the artist who created it.

Can you tell us about your journey as an artist? What inspired you to pursue art, and how has your style evolved over the years?

Art has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, although for a long time I never imagined that I would become an artist. I had quite a difficult and lonely childhood and learned very early to internalise a lot of what I was feeling. Looking back, drawing became a kind of company for me and a place where I could express things I did not know how to express in any other way.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is from when I was about nine. I was sitting outside copying images from an old, torn comic book when my older cousin saw me. He did not really say anything, he just smiled. The next day he came back with a sketchbook for me. It sounds like a small thing, but I still get emotional thinking about it because, as a child, it felt like someone had noticed me.

From then on, I would draw whenever I needed to get out of my own head. Looking back now, art had already become a form of therapy for me.

The decision to pursue art came almost by accident when I was seventeen. At school, another student walked in carrying charcoal drawings from a private art school where he had been preparing for the Fine Arts entrance examinations at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Until that moment, I did not even know that path existed.

The exams were only about six months away, and he warned me that people often prepared for years. I had never even worked with charcoal, but I could not stop thinking about it and eventually went with him to the school.

That is where I met the artist and teacher Irma Voulgari, who became incredibly important at that point in my life. She was honest about how little time I had, but instead of discouraging me, she simply said we should start. I fell completely in love with charcoal and began going there every day after school.

When the entrance examinations arrived, I was not sure there was even a point in trying, but Irma insisted. More importantly, she believed I could do it. After less than six months of preparation, I took the exams and passed. That was really the beginning of my life as an artist.

After university, I exhibited and sold work, but my relationship with art was not a straight line. Life took over, and there were long periods when I stopped painting completely. A little over a year ago, after years of pushing myself beyond my limits, I reached a point where I could not continue that way anymore.

Painting came back into my life for much the same reason drawing had when I was a child. I needed somewhere to put what was happening internally. This time, I did not stop. I fell in love with making art again.

My work has changed with me. Earlier paintings were often more direct and narrative. Over time, they have become more psychological and atmospheric, with greater ambiguity and more space for the viewer. That evolution eventually became Behind the Mirror, where the recurring diving helmet acts as a mask and a vessel for things that are difficult to express directly.

The idea of finding a way to breathe under pressure grew naturally out of my own experiences.

There is something almost circular about it. Art was where I went as a child when I could not express what was happening inside me. Many years later, after losing touch with it several times, it became the place I returned to again. The difference now is that I do not see it as something I can simply leave behind anymore.

What themes or messages do you aim to convey through your artwork, and how do you go about expressing them visually?

The main thread running through my work is identity and what exists underneath the versions of ourselves that we present to the world. I am interested in the roles we take on, the masks and façades we create, the things we internalise, and the different ways we learn to exist under pressure.

My paintings move through psychological, theatrical and, more recently, mythological spaces, but for me they are all different ways of approaching the same questions.

This became the foundation of my ongoing series, Behind the Mirror. The recurring diving helmet is central to that world. I created it as a kind of universal vessel, something that can protect you and allow you to breathe in an environment where you otherwise could not.

Metaphorically, I see it in a similar way to the mechanisms we create to survive difficult situations in life. At the same time, it is a mask. By hiding the face, I remove many of the immediate things we use to identify a person. The figure becomes less about one individual and more about a feeling, a psychological state, or an experience that could belong to anyone.

The theatrical element is important to me as well. Masks have always fascinated me, particularly because of their history in ancient Greek theatre, where exaggerated masks allowed emotions and characters to reach an audience from a distance.

In my work, I am interested in almost reversing that idea. I conceal the face and then use the body, colour, light, atmosphere, and environment to communicate what the face normally would.

Colour has a particularly important meaning in my work. I often use very saturated and bold colours because, for me, our colour is always there, even when life covers it, suppresses it, or makes us lose sight of it. It is waiting to come back.

There is something almost cleansing about colour for me, a way of cutting through the darkness and everything that has accumulated around us. That is why even in some of my darker paintings, there are moments where intense colour breaks through.

At the same time, I do not use colour and light in exactly the same way in every work. They change depending on the emotion and psychological state of the painting. Sometimes colour takes over; sometimes it survives only in fragments. Light can isolate a figure, expose something, create tension, or transform the atmosphere of the entire space.

More recently, I have also started bringing Greek mythology into Behind the Mirror. I am not particularly interested in illustrating the myths as they are traditionally told. What interests me is the psychological core underneath them.

These stories may be ancient, but they contain fears, desires, conflicts, and questions that still exist in contemporary society. I take that psychological core and reinterpret it through the world of Behind the Mirror, allowing the myths to become another way of looking at experiences that continue to repeat themselves around us and within us.

But ultimately, I do not want my paintings to deliver a fixed message. I know what a work means to me and what brought me to it, but I do not believe the viewer needs to see what I see.

I actually value the opposite. I want there to be enough space for someone to bring their own experiences into the painting, recognise something of themselves, and create their own story.

If somebody sees something completely different from what I had in mind, that interpretation is still theirs and it is still valid. Once the painting leaves my studio, I do not think the story belongs only to me anymore.

Can you walk us through your creative process? How do you start a new piece, and what techniques or materials do you prefer to use?

My creative process is closely connected to the ideas and questions that are already present in my work. I usually begin with a thought, an emotion, a psychological state, or sometimes a story that stays with me.

The work then develops through the figure, the surrounding environment, the atmosphere, the colour, and the light. I am interested in how all of these elements can communicate something that would normally be expressed through a face.

The diving helmet has become an important part of that process because it gives me a way to remove the face from the equation. Once the face is hidden, the body and the surrounding space have to carry the emotion.

Colour and light are also essential. Saturated colour can break through an otherwise darker atmosphere, while light can isolate a figure, create tension, reveal something, or completely change the emotional character of a scene.

My work has also increasingly incorporated mythology. Rather than beginning with the traditional visual representation of a myth, I look for the psychological idea underneath it and then ask how that idea can exist inside the world I have created through Behind the Mirror.

The materials themselves support that process. I primarily work with acrylic and oil, using painting to build figurative scenes that can feel theatrical, psychological, or dreamlike.

For me, the process is ultimately about finding the visual form that best carries the emotional or psychological idea behind a work.

What challenges have you faced in your artistic career, and how have you overcome them? Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?

Probably the biggest challenge in my artistic career has been finding a way to keep art present through the different realities of life.

After university, I painted, exhibited, and sold work, but there were also long periods when work, financial responsibilities, and personal difficulties took over. Art became something I kept telling myself I would return to when life became easier.

The problem is that life does not necessarily become easier.

For a long time, my response was simply to work harder and keep pushing myself, often beyond my limits. Eventually, I reached a point where I could not continue that way anymore. Ironically, it was during that period that painting came back into my life and gave me somewhere to put things I could not always express in words.

Returning to art after being away was challenging. Instead of trying to become the artist I had been before, I allowed myself to discover who I was as an artist now. That eventually led to Behind the Mirror and the work I am making today.

An artistic career also comes with uncertainty, rejection, and self doubt. I am still learning not to let those external things determine how I see myself or my work. For me, persistence is not about never being affected by them. It is about continuing despite them.

I am not sure I like giving advice to aspiring artists because I am still learning and building my own path. But one thing I wish I had understood earlier is not to wait for the perfect moment to make art. There will always be responsibilities, problems, and reasons to postpone something that matters to you.

Stay curious and critical of your work without becoming your own worst enemy. Learn, experiment, and allow your work to change. Exhibitions, sales, social media, and recognition are part of building a career, but they should not become the reason you make art.

If I had to reduce what I have learned to something simple, it would be this: keep showing up for your work.

You do not need to have everything figured out, and your path does not have to be straight. Mine certainly was not, and it still is not.

Just do not disappear from your own work.

How do you see the role of art in society, and what impact do you hope your work has on your audience? Are there any particular responses or interactions with viewers that stand out to you?

I think art has always had the ability to hold things that are difficult to explain directly. It can reflect society, question it, preserve memory, create discomfort, offer escape, or simply make someone feel less alone.

I do not think art has one single role, or that every work needs to provide an answer. Sometimes its value is simply that it makes us stop, feel something, or see ourselves differently for a moment.

In my own work, I do not want people to feel they need to understand exactly what I intended before they can connect with it. I want the paintings to leave enough space for viewers to bring their own experiences into them.

If someone sees a completely different story from mine, or recognises something personal in a figure whose face is hidden, that is not a misunderstanding. It is part of what I want the work to do.

Some of my most meaningful experiences have come from conversations with viewers. During a recent exhibition, one woman became very emotional and started crying because she recognised so much of her own life in the paintings. We ended up talking for almost an hour.

What stayed with me was not that she understood them in the same way I had created them, but that they had opened a space where she could see and talk about something deeply personal to her.

Another younger woman came back to the gallery four times. She wanted to experience the paintings again depending on how she was feeling that day. Colour resonated strongly with her, particularly the idea that our colour is always there, even when life covers it, waiting for us to regain it.

I found that incredibly meaningful. The paintings were not something fixed for her. Her experience of them changed as she changed.

Those interactions probably explain better than anything what I hope my work can do. I do not want to tell people what to think. I want to create something open enough for them to enter with their own memories, emotions, and experiences.

If a painting stays with someone after they leave the room, or makes them return because it feels different on another day, then for me it has already done something important.

Behind the Mirror

There is something deeply human at the centre of Michalis Kitsis’s work. His figures may wear helmets, inhabit theatrical spaces, or emerge from the language of ancient mythology, but the questions beneath them are remarkably contemporary.

Who are we beneath the roles we perform? What do we hide from others? What do we create to survive? And what happens when the things we use as protection become part of our identity?

Through Behind the Mirror, Kitsis does not attempt to answer these questions for the viewer. Instead, he creates a space where they can be felt.

The hidden face becomes universal. The helmet becomes both protection and confinement. Colour becomes something that can disappear beneath the weight of life, but also something that is always waiting to return.

And perhaps that is where the strength of his work lies. The paintings do not ask us simply to look at the figures. They ask us to look inward.

Once the painting leaves the studio, the story is no longer his alone. It becomes ours too.