Sophia Savalas received training in San Francisco art schools during the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s.  She continued schooling through San Jose City College, and further received a B.A. in Art and Psychology from University Without Walls in San Francisco, and a M.A. in Art and Psychology from Goddard College in 1982.  She studied art with Vladislav Andreyev, a Russian Icon Master, and with the prominent San Jose, CA, artists Luis Gutierrez, Lynn and Harry Powers, and Gay Schy.

In July 1999, just off San Francisco’s Union Square, Sophia launched the public phase of her art as the Selected Artist for Meridian Gallery’s 10th Anniversary Celebration of cross-cultural art.

It took two years for Sophia to produce approximately 25 original pieces displayed at her first one-woman show that was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook and other Periodicals. In the Chronicle she was quoted:

“Everybody who ate at the Old In-Time Cafe in San Mateo was Greek, at least in the eyes of the owner Dmitri Tsavalas (father of Sophia). I didn’t know until I went to school that Asian, Hispanic, and African American people were not Greek.”

Sophia’s art often melds the ancient tradition of Byzantine icon painting, in which she was steeped, with images, and myths of other cultures. Sophia was selected for showing at the Meridian by Owner and Founder Anne Brodsky, because Sophia’s work is rooted in tradition with a sense of spirituality.”

Sophia was clear that most Greek women don’t go where she chooses to go: “Women didn’t make icons. . . .It’s a patriarchal thing. They paint them, but they don’t show them. It was a big leap for me, I’m 60, I went through the feminist movement. But there’s still a little part of me that says, ‘I hope they don’t yell at me.’”