Food and Culture

Marina Gerolimatos’ hands are both efficient and expressive. And in the Eliot House dining hall her efficiency (as Eliot’s dining card swiper) and her expressiveness (as a painter) are both on display. Gerolimatos, who has lived in America since 1978 and worked at Harvard since 1980, presided over the opening of the first public display of her work on March 3 in a small dining room in Eliot. So far, the reviews are glowing.

“Even the mayor stopped by,” Gerolimatos says, but she did not give many details of the visit. Eliot House Master Lino Pertile is also a supporter and fan. “I could not have been able to display my paintings without his help,” Gerolimatos says. “He has been so kind.”

The work itself is a visual personal history, evoking elements of Gerolimatos’ childhood in Athens and her Greek Orthodox faith. A boldly colored, sparse image of a woman’s face greets visitors as they enter the room. This image, of Gerolimatos’ mother, is one of the 12 original paintings on display. The other brightly colored works, many of which depict Biblical scenes, are hung on the adjacent white walls.

Gerolimatos completed the painting of her mother, who died in 1972, when she turned to painting to express her grief. “Every night I would dream of her,” she says with tears in her eyes. “It was as if she had never really left me. I still felt her presence.” Unable to get the image of her mother out of her mind, Gerolimatos decided to put it on canvas. “Painting my mother’s portrait helped me get through the pain of her death. She was so beautiful,” she says.

Gerolimatos continued painting after this initial therapeutic turn. Her next piece was an image of the Madonna with tears rolling down her cheeks. “My friends told me that this painting reminded them of me. The Virgin is so sad, and I was still grieving over my mother,” she says.

Gerolimatos has never had any formal training in art. She has casually pursued this hobby for the past 30 years. With her art now up temporarily in Eliot House, she is already planning for her next installation, to go in in the Masters’ residence. One new project will express her gratitude for Pertile’s support. “He loves the Acropolis,” she says with a warm smile. “So I’m working on a painting of that for him.”

—K.A. Muller