“Just moving from Toronto to Warkworth, Northumberland County…is transformational. It transforms your inside through the outside. We can’t separate people from environment, or from society, as much as we try to be islands.”

Dimitri Papatheodorou

Visual artist, musician and architect Dimitri Papatheodorou speaks to NFOTA’s Shane Joseph about “Periphery,” his Warkworth home studio/gallery, architecture, painting, Northumberland County, and finding home in his identity as a gay man.

In this series we feature interviews and discussions with Individual Artists, Leaders of Arts Groups and Organizations, Civic Leaders, and other Arts Lovers in our county.

Northumberland Festival of the Arts will take place across Northumberland County from September 16 – October 2, 2022.

“Architects tend to draw pictures to depict the future. We make plans in either 2D or 3D, drawing to project an idea of space into the future in a home or a place of work.”–Dimitri Papatheodorou

“Although I haven’t done a DNA test, my ancestral home is in Arcadia, which is both a mythical and a real landscape in Central Greece.”–Dimitri Papatheodorou

“The idea of home…is so fundamental to our well-being. Our homes are sacred places, the caves we re-enter.”–Dimitri Papatheodorou

“The periphery is where things happen, not in the centre. The centre is already established…We all know it. We can all find it easily. It’s the periphery, the outskirts, the margins, where innovation comes out of and change happens.”–Dimitri Papatheodorou

“I think a lot of gay people or queer people live in transition all the time”–Dimitri Papatheodorou

“In the last few years since moving to the country, I’m connecting with the world more…I’m volunteering, I’m participating in arts culture, doing things like this. That’s a big deal for someone who was afraid of his shadow for many years.”–Dimitri Papatheodorou

“That’s the other thing about Northumberland County; It’s not Prince Edward County. There aren’t any huge tour buses or people descending. It’s all about very intimate, not exclusive as in expensive, but intimate, smaller scale experiences.”–Dimitri Papatheodorou