The first solo exhibition of the painter Myrto Kalliga Gavrili entitled “SURROUNDINGS” was opened on Wednesday May 10, 2023, at the Macart Cultural Space, as part of the Athens City Festival organized by the Municipality of Athens. Starting from the images of the world that surrounds us and her main concern of the transcription of these into visual language, the painter reintroduces to us the beauty that we encounter in everyday life and often pass by. She uses all kinds of light materials, pastels, watercolors, inks, colored pencils, and experiments with monotypes and engraving techniques, looking for immediacy, economy and purity of expression. Myrto’s work stands out at a time when painting tends to be erased, even as a word, from the fine arts schools which set the fictitious goal of the new as a trophy while ignoring, perhaps willfully, that the new is the true that demands, beyond talent, education and mental toil to acquire form. In contrast to the general climate, the painter creates images that arise from an internal mirror of the visible world, contemplative and optimistic at the same time, which in addition to an immediate present, are also a promise for tomorrow.